Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  “S’il vous plaît,” Rudolph said with dignity.

  After that, they spoke in a mixture of the two languages, both of them laughing at the kind of French Rudolph managed to dredge up from his memory, as he told her about the bosomy French teacher he had had as a teenaged boy at home, about how he had believed he was in love with her, had written her ardent letters in French, had once drawn a picture of her, naked, which she had confiscated. For her part, the woman had seemed to be pleased to listen to him, to correct his mistakes in her language, to praise him when he got out more than three words in a row. If this was what French whores were like, Rudolph thought drunkenly, after a bottle of champagne, he understood why prostitution was such a respected fixture of French civilization.

  Then, the woman—he had asked her name, which was Jeanne—had looked at her watch and become serious. “It’s getting late,” she said in English, gathering in her bag and magazine, “I must be getting on.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time,” he said. His voice was thick and he was having difficulty getting the words out.

  She stood up. “I’ve enjoyed it very much, Jimmy,” she said. He had told her that was his name. One more mask. He would not be traced. “But I expect an important call …”

  He stood up to say good-bye, half relieved, half sorry that he wasn’t going to make love to her. His chair fell back and he teetered a little as he rose. “It’s been sharm—charming,” he said.

  She frowned at him. “Where is your hotel?” she asked.

  Where was his hotel? For a moment the map of France was blotted from his consciousness. “Where’s my—my hotel …” he said, his voice blurred. “Oh. Antibes.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought for a moment. “You are in no condition to drive, you know.”

  He hung his head, abashed. Americans, he felt she was saying, scornfully, arrived in France in no condition to drive. In no condition to do anything. “I’m not really a drinking man,” he said, making it sound like an excuse. “I’ve had a bad day.”

  “The roads are dangerous, especially at night,” she said.

  “Especially at night,” he agreed.

  “Would you like to come with me?” she asked.

  At last, he thought. It would not be a sin now, merely a safety measure. As a businessman, he really should ask her what it would cost, but after the drinks together and the friendly conversation it would sound crass. Later would do just as well. Whatever the price turned out to be, he certainly could afford one night in Europe with a courtesan. He was proud of himself for thinking of the word—courtesan. Suddenly he felt his head clearing. “Volontiers,” he said, using her language to show her he wasn’t as far gone as she thought. He called loudly for the waiter: “Garçon,” and got out his wallet. He covered his wallet with his hands so that she couldn’t see how many bills he had in it. In situations like this, even though he was not used to them, he knew one had to be careful.

  The waiter came over and told him, in French, how much he owed. He couldn’t understand the man and turned helplessly, ashamed, to the woman. “What did he say?”

  “Two hundred and fifteen francs,” she said.

  He took three hundred-franc bills out of his wallet and waved away the waiter’s fumbling effort to make change.

  “You shouldn’t have tipped him that much,” she whispered as she took his arm and guided him out of the restaurant.

  “Americans,” he said. “A noble and generous race.”

  She laughed, held his arm more tightly.

  They found a taxi and he admired the grace with which she raised her arm to hail the driver, the shapeliness of her legs, the warm curve of her bosom.

  She held his hand in the taxi, no more. It was a short ride. The taxi now smelled of perfume, musky, just the hint of flowers in its past. The taxi stopped in front of a small apartment house on a dark street. She paid the driver, then took his arm again and led him into the house. He followed her up one flight of stairs, admiring her from below now. She opened the door with a key, guided him along a dark hallway and through a doorway and switched on a lamp. He was surprised at how large the room was and how tastefully furnished, although he couldn’t make out too many details in the shaded light of the single lamp. She must have a generous clientele, he thought, Arabs, Italian industrialists, German steel barons.

  “Now …” she began to say, when the telephone rang.

  She wasn’t lying, he thought, she was expecting a call. She hesitated, as though she didn’t want to pick up the phone. “Would you mind …?” she said. She gestured toward another doorway. “I think it would be better if I was alone for this.”

  “Of course.” He went into the next room and switched on a light. It was a small bedroom, with a double bed, already made up. He heard her voice through the door that he had closed behind him. He got the impression that she was angry with whomever she was talking to, although he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He looked thoughtfully at the big bed. Last chance to leave. The hell with it, he thought and undressed, dropping his clothes carelessly on a chair and switching his wallet to a different pocket from the one he had been carrying it in. He got into bed and pulled the covers over him.

  He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew a warm perfumed body was in bed beside him, the room was dark, there was a satiny, firm leg thrown across him, a soft, exploring hand on his belly, a mouth against his ear, murmuring words he could not understand.

  He did not know what time it was when, all nerves quiescent, his body glowingly at rest, he finally lay still, his fingertips just touching the now familiar body that had given him so much pleasure. Fragrant, accidental humanity lying in the bed beside him. All praise to the animal hidden in the black suit. Disregarded, gloriously disregarded the deprived Puritan. He raised his head, leaned on one elbow over the woman, kissed her gently on the cheek. “It must be late,” he whispered. “I have to go now.”

  “Drive carefully, chéri,” the woman said, dreamy, replete. His doing.

  “I’m all right now,” he said. “I’m not drunk anymore.”

  The woman twisted and reached out and lit a lamp on the bedside table. He got out of bed, proud of his nakedness. Adolescent vainglory, he admitted wryly to himself, and dressed. The woman rose, too, strong, supple body, breasts full, haunches muscled, and covered herself in a gown, sat in a chair watching him with a little smile as he put on his clothes. He wished she hadn’t put on the light, had not wakened. Then he could have left a hundred francs, maybe a thousand francs, on the mantelpiece, darkness and sleep concealing his provincial American ignorance of such matters; he could have slipped out of the apartment and out of the house, all connections broken. But the light was on, the woman was watching him, smiling. Waiting?

  There was no avoiding the moment. He took out his wallet. “Is a thousand francs enough?” he asked, stumbling a little over the “enough.”

  She looked at him curiously, the smile vanishing. Then she began to laugh. The laugh was low at first, then became raucous. She bent over, put her head in her hands, her thick, gleaming hair falling in a dark cascade, hiding her face, the laugh continuing. He watched her, feeling his nerves twitching, regretting that he had been in her bed, that he had offered her a drink, that he was in Nice, regretting that he had ever set foot in France.

  “I’m sorry,” he said inanely. “It’s just that I’m not accustomed …”

  She raised her head, her face still distorted by laughter. She stood up and came over to him and kissed his cheek. “Poor dear,” she said, the laughter still there, at the back of her throat. “I didn’t know I was worth that much.”

  “If you want more …” he said stiffly.

  “Much more,” she said. “I want nothing. The most exorbitant price. Dear man. Thinking all this time that I was professional. And being so polite and gentle, too. If all customers were like you, I think we’d all become whores. I
liked Americans before, but I like them even better now.”

  “Christ, Jeanne,” he said. It was the first time he had spoken her name. “It never occurred to me that anybody would pick me out, take me home with her and … I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. You’re too modest, my charming American, too modest by half.”

  “Well,” he said, “it never happened to me before.” He was afraid she was going to start laughing again.

  She shook her head wonderingly. “What’s wrong with American women?” she said. She moved over to the bed and sat on the edge. She patted it. “Come, sit down, please,” she said.

  He sat down next to her. She took his hand, sisterly now. “If it will make you feel any better, chéri,” she said, “it never happened to me before, either. But I have been so lonely—starved—Couldn’t you tell?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I’m not really a ladies’ man.”

  “Not a ladies’ man,” she said, gently mocking. “Not a drinking man. Just the sort of man I needed tonight. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m married. To a major in the army. He was an aide to the military attaché in Washington.”

  That’s where the English came from, he thought, no lobbyists, no congressmen, no motels.

  “Now he is stationed temporarily in Paris. At the Ecole Militaire,” she said. “Temporarily.” She laughed shortly, harshly. “He’s been there three months now. I have two children in school here in Nice. They are visiting their grandmother tonight.”

  “You weren’t wearing a wedding ring,” he said. “I looked.”

  “Not tonight.” Her face grew grim. “I didn’t want to be married tonight. When I got my husband’s telegram this afternoon telling me he was going to call, I knew what he was going to say. He was going to say that once again he would be too busy with his work to come to Nice. He has been too busy for three months. They must be preparing a terrible war at the Ecole Militaire when a poor little major can’t get off for even one day to fly to Nice to see his wife once in three months. I have a very good idea of what kind of war my major is preparing in Paris. You heard me on the telephone …?”

  “Yes,” Rudolph said. “I couldn’t hear what you were saying.… You sounded angry.”

  “It wasn’t a friendly conversation,” Jeanne said. “No, not friendly at all. So now you are beginning to have some idea of why I was sitting at a café table, not wearing a wedding ring?”

  “More or less,” Rudolph said.

  “I was on the point of quitting and going home when you came into the café and sat down,” she said quietly. “Two men had approached me before. Posing, stuffy men, experts, connoisseurs of—what’s the American phrase—one-night …?”

  “One-night stands,” Rudolph said.

  “That’s it.”

  “At least they didn’t think you were a whore,” he said ruefully. “Forgive me.”

  She patted his hand. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “It added just the right note of comedy to the evening. When you came in and sat down, with your decent, bony, respectable American face, I decided not to go home.” She smiled. “Not just then. It turns out I didn’t make a mistake. You must never be modest again.” Another sisterly pat of the hand. “Now, it’s late. You said you had to go.… Do you want my telephone number? Can I see you again?”

  “I suppose I ought to tell you a little about myself, too,” Rudolph said. “First of all, my name isn’t Jimmy. I don’t know why I …” He shrugged. “I guess I was ashamed of what I was doing.” He smiled. “What I thought I was doing. Maybe I half believed if it wasn’t my own name it wasn’t me who was really doing it. More likely, if we ever met and I was with somebody else and you said hello, Jimmy, I could say, I’m sorry, madam, you must be thinking of somebody else.”

  “I wish I could dare keep a diary,” Jeanne said. “I would write down all that happened tonight in detail. In great detail. It would give my children something to laugh at when they discovered it after my death. What do you know, dear, old, sensible Maman?”

  “My name is Rudolph,” he said. “I was never fond of the name. When I was a boy I thought it sounded un-American, though it’s hard to tell what sounds American anymore and what doesn’t. And why anybody should care. But when you’re a boy in his teens, your head full of books, with heroes with names like Huckleberry Finn, Daniel Boone, Studs Lonigan … Well, it seemed to me that Rudolph sounded like … like heavy German cooking. Especially during the war.” He had never told anyone how he felt about his Christian name, had never formulated it clearly for himself even, and now found that it was with a sense of relief, mixed with wry amusement, that he could speak about it openly to this handsome stranger, or almost stranger. Also, sitting in the muted lamplight on the bed which had been the furniture of exquisite pleasure, he wanted to make a further offering of himself to the woman, find reasons for delaying leave-taking, join her in the pretense that the dawn was not near, departure inevitable.

  “Rudolph,” Jeanne said. “Neither good nor bad. Think of it as Rodolfo. That has a better sound, doesn’t it?”

  “Much better.”

  “Good,” she said teasingly. “From now on I will call you Rodolfo.”

  “Rodolfo Jordache,” he said. It gave him a new, more dashing view of himself. “Jordache. That’s my family name. I’m at the Hôtel du Cap.” All defenses down now. Names and addresses. Each at the other’s mercy. “One more thing. I’m married.”

  “I expected as much,” Jeanne said. “Your affair. Just as my marriage is my affair.”

  “My wife is with me in Antibes.” He didn’t feel he had to tell her that they were not on the best of terms, either. “Give me your telephone number.”

  She got up and went over to a little desk where there was a pen and some paper and wrote down her telephone number. She gave him the slip of paper and he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

  “Other times,” she said, “you will have to rent a hotel room. The children will be here.”

  Other times.…

  “Now,” she said, “I’ll call you a taxi.” They went into the salon and she dialed a number, spoke quickly for a moment, waited a little while, said, “Très bien,” hung up. “The taxi will be here in five minutes,” she said. Before she opened the front door for him they kissed, a long, grateful, healing kiss. “Good night, Rodolfo,” she said. She smiled, a smile he knew he would remember for a long time.

  « »

  The taxi was waiting for him when he got down to the street, its diesel motor making it sound like a launch waiting to put out to sea. Voyages.

  “L’hôtel Negresco,” Rudolph said as he got in. When the taxi started, he looked back at the house. It was imperative for him to be able to find it again, to recognize it in his dreams. When they got to the Negresco he made sure he was not run down as he crossed to where his car was parked. Then, at the wheel of his rented car, he drove slowly and very carefully on the deserted road along the sea to Antibes.

  When he reached the port he slowed down even more, then abruptly swung the car into the parking lot and got out and walked along the quay to where the Clothilde was berthed in the silent harbor. There were no lights to be seen on the Clothilde. He didn’t want to wake Wesley or Bunny. He took off his shoes and climbed down from the deck into the dory lying alongside, slipped the line, sat amidships and noiselessly put the oars through the locks. He rowed almost soundlessly away from the ship toward the middle of the harbor, then, pulling more strongly, toward the harbor entrance, the tarry smell of the water strong in his nostrils, mixed with the flowery fragrance from shore.

  He had acted almost automatically, not asking himself why he was doing this. The pull of the oars against his shoulders and arms gave him a sober pleasure, and the sigh of the small bow wave against the sides of the dory seemed a fitting music with which to end the night.

  The city of Antibes, looming shadows, with a light here and there, receded slowly as he
headed toward the red and green lights that marked the channel into the sea. The rhythm of his body as he bent forward, then leaned back, satisfied him. How many times had these same oars moved in the hands of his brother. His own hands were soft against the smooth wood, polished by the strong hands of his brother. The thought that perhaps in the morning his palms would be blistered pleased him.

  Being alone on the dark surface of the water was a benediction to him and the blinking lights of the harbor entrance comforted him, with their promise of safe anchorages. Grief was possible here, but also hope. “Thomas, Thomas,” he said softly as he went out into the sea and felt its gentle swell lift the dory. He remembered, as he rowed, all the times they had failed each other, and the end, when they had forgotten the failures or at least forgiven them.

  He felt tireless and serene, alone in the dark night, but then he heard the coughing of a small fishing boat putting out to sea behind him, one small acetylene lamp at its bow. The fishing boat passed near him and he could see two men in it staring curiously at him. He was conscious of how strange it must look to them, a man in a dark business suit, alone, headed out to sea at that hour. He kept on rowing until they were out of sight, then let the oars dangle and stared up at the starlit sky.

  He thought of his father, that enraged and pitiful old man, who had also rowed in darkness, who had picked a night of storm for his last voyage. Suicide had been possible for his father, who had found the peace in death he had never achieved in life. It was not possible for him. He was a different man, with different claims upon him. He took one long, deep breath, then turned the dory around and rowed back to the Clothilde, his hands burning.

  Quietly, he tied up to the Clothilde’s stern, climbed the ladder and went ashore. He put on his shoes, a rite observed, a ceremony celebrated, and got into his car and started the engine.

  It was past three in the morning when he got to the hotel. The lobby was deserted, the night concierge yawning behind the desk. He asked for his key and was turning toward the elevator when the concierge called after him. “Oh, Mr. Jordache. Mrs. Burke left a message for you. You are to call her whenever you get in. She said it was urgent.”