Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery

by Patricia Highsmith

  My love,

  Ina

  The letter was typewritten. Ingham read it a second time. It wasn’t a letter at all. It made him a little angry. What was he supposed to do, sit here another week until she felt in the mood to write? Why was she so bouleversed? ‘We thought.’.’ Was she so close to Peter Langland? Had she and Peter been holding John’s hand in the hospital before John died? That was, assuming he had taken sleeping pills.

  Ingham took a walk along the beach, plodding the same sand he had crossed so many times in quest of a letter from Ina. Maddening, he thought, her letter. She was the kind who could dash off a ten-line letter and give the facts, and perhaps say, ‘Details later,’ but here there weren’t even any facts. It was unexpectedly heartless of her Ingham felt. She might have had the imagination to realize his position, sitting miles away, waiting. And why hadn’t she had time to write him in all the days before John did it? And this was the girl he intended to marry? Ingham smiled, and it was a relief. But he felt swimmy and lost, as if he floated in space. Yes, it was understood that they would marry. He had proposed in a casual way, the only way Ina would have liked. She hadn’t said, ‘Oh, yes, darling!’ but it was understood. They might not marry for several months. It depended on their jobs and the finding of an apartment, perhaps, because sometimes Ina had to go to California for six weeks or so, but the point was—

  His thoughts trailed off, cooked by the sun on his head, discouraged by the sheer effort of imagining New York’s unwritten conventions in this torrid Arabic land. Ingham remembered a story Adams had told him: an English girl had smiled, or maybe just stared too long, at an Arab, who had followed her along a dark beach and raped her. That had been the girl’s story. An Arab considered a girl’s stare a green light. The Tunisian government, to keep in good odour with the West, had made a big to-do, tried the man and given him a long sentence, which had been very soon commuted, however. The story was an absurdity, and Ingham laughed, causing a surprised glance from the two young men—they looked French—who were walking past with skin-diving gear just then.

  In the afternoon, Ingham worked, but did only three pages. He was fidgety.

  That evening, he had dinner with the man in levis. Ingham had found him in the Café de la Plage, where he went to have a drink at eight o’clock. The man spoke to him first. Again the German police dog was with him. He was a Dane and spoke excellent English with a slight English accent. His name was Anders Jensen. He said he lived in a rented apartment in a street across from Melik’s. Ingham tried the boukhah which Jensen was drinking. It was a little like grappa or tequila.

  Ingham was in a rather tight-lipped mood, so far as giving information about himself went, but Jensen did not pump him. Ingham replied, to a question from Jensen, that he was a writer and taking a month’s vacation. Jensen was a painter. He looked thirty or thirty-two.

  ‘In Copenhagen I had a breakdown.’ Jensen said with a tired, dry smile. He was lean and tan with light straight hair and a strangely absent, drifting expression in his blue eyes, as if he were not paying full attention to anything around him. ‘My doctor—a psychiatrist—told me to go somewhere in the sun. I’ve been here for eight months.’

  ‘Are you comfortable where you are?’ Jensen had said his place was simple, and he looked capable of roughing it, so Ingham supposed the house was primitive indeed. ‘Good conditions for painting, I mean?’

  ‘The light is splendid.’ Jensen said. ‘Hardly any furniture, but there never is. They rent you a house, you know, and you say, “Where’s the bed? Where’s a chair? Where’s a table, for Christ’s sake?” They say that will come tomorrow. Or next week. The truth is, they don’t use furniture. They sleep on mats and fold their clothing on the floor. Or drop it. But I have a bed at least. And I made a table out of boxes and a couple of boards I picked up on the street.—They broke my dog’s leg. He’s just getting over the limp.’

  ‘Really?—Why?’ Ingham asked, shocked.

  ‘Oh, they just threw a big rock. They dropped it out of a window, I think. Waited their chance when Hasso was lying in the shade by a house across the street. They love to hurt animals, you know. And maybe a thorough-bred dog like Hasso is more tempting than an ordinary dog to them.’ He patted the dog who was sitting by his chair. ‘Hasso’s still nervous from it. He hates Arabs. Crooked Arabs.’ Again the distant but amused smile. ‘I’m glad he’s obedient, or he’d tear the trousers off twelve a day around here.’

  Ingham laughed. “There’s one in red pants and a turban I’d like to paste. He haunts my car all the time. Whenever it’s parked around here.’

  Jensen lifted a finger. ‘I know him. Abdullah. A real bastard. Do you know, I saw him robbing a car just two streets from here in the middle of an afternoon?’ Jensen laughed with delight, but almost silently. He had handsome white teeth. ‘And no one does anything!’

  ‘Was he stealing a suitcase?’

  ‘Clothing of some kind, I think. He can always flog that in the market.—I think I shall not stay here much longer because of Hasso. If they hit him again, they may kill him. Anyway, it’s an inferno of heat here in August.’

  They got into a second bottle of wine. Melik’s was quiet. Only two other tables were occupied, by Arabs, all men.

  ‘You like to take vacations alone?’ Jensen asked.

  ‘Yes. I suppose I do.’

  ‘So you are not writing now?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ve started a book. I’ve worked harder in my life, but I’m working.’

  By midnight, Ingham was on his way with Jensen to have a look at Jensen’s apartment. It was in a small white house with a door on the street which was closed by a padlock. Jensen turned on the feeblest of electric lights, and they climbed a naked white—but grimy—stairs without a banister. There was the smell of a toilet somewhere. Jensen had the next floor, which consisted of one good-sized room, and the floor above, which had two smaller rooms. A confusion of canvases leaned against the walls and lay on tables of the box-and-board variety Jensen had described. In one of the upstairs rooms, there was a little gas stove with two burners. There was one chair which neither of them took. They sat on the floor. Jensen poured red wine.

  Jensen had lit two candles which were fixed in wine bottles. He was talking about having to go to Tunis for paint supplies. He said he went by bus. Ingham looked around at the paintings. A fiery orange colour predominated. They were abstract, Ingham supposed, though some of the straight lines and squares in them could have been meant to be houses. In one, a rag, maybe a paint rag, was flattened and painted on to the canvas, crumpled. It was not a light in which to make a judgement, and Ingham didn’t.

  ‘Have you got a shower here?’ Ingham asked.

  ‘Oh, I use a bucket Down on the terrace. Or the court. It has a drain.’

  There was a sound of two men’s voices, arguing, in the street below. Jensen lifted his head to listen. The voices passed on. The tone had been more angry than usual.

  ‘You understand Arabic?’ Ingham asked.

  ‘Some. I don’t make much of an effort. But languages come easily for me. I get along. I limp, as they say.’

  Jensen had put out some dry white cheese and some bread. Ingham did not want anything. The plate of cheese was rather pretty in the candlelight, surrounded by a halo of shadow. The dog, lying on the floor by the door, gave a deep sigh and slept.

  Half an hour later, Jensen put his hand on Ingham’s shoulder and asked him if he would like to spend the night. Ingham suddenly realized he was queer, or at least was making a queer pass.

  ‘No, I have my car outside,’ Ingham said. ‘Thank you, anyway.’

  Jensen attempted to kiss him, missed and kissed his cheek briefly. He missed because Ingham dodged a little. Jensen was on his knees. Ingham shivered. He was in shirtsleeves.

  ‘You never sleep with men? It’s nice. No complications,’ Jensen said, rolling back on his heels, sitting down again on the floor only three feet away from Ingham. ‘The girls here are aw
ful, whether they’re tourists or whether they’re—what shall I say—native. Then there’s the danger of syphilis. They all have it, you know. They’re sort of immune to it, but they pass it on.’

  A profound bitterness was audible in Jensen’s subdued tone. Ingham was at that moment calling himself an idiot for not having realized that Jensen was homosexual. After all, as a fairly sophisticated New Yorker, he might have been a bit brighter. Ingham felt like smiling, but he was afraid Jensen might think he was smiling at him, instead of at himself, so Ingham kept a neutral expression.

  ‘Lots of boys available here, I’ve heard.’ Ingham said.

  ‘Oh, yes. Little thieving bastards.’ Jensen replied with his wistful, absent smile. Now he was reclined on the floor, on one elbow. ‘Nice, if you send them straight out of the house.’

  Now Ingham laughed.

  ‘You said you weren’t married.’

  ‘No.’ Ingham said. ‘Can I see some of your paintings?’

  Jensen put on another light or two. All his lights were naked bulbs. Jensen had a few pictures with huge, distorted faces in the foreground. The red-orange in many of them gave a sense of extreme heat. They were all a trifle sloppy and undisciplined, Ingham thought. But obviously he worked hard and pursued a theme: melancholy, apparently, which he thrust forward in the form of the ravaged faces, backgrounded by chaotic Arabian houses, or falling trees, or windstorms, sandstorms, rainstorms. Ingham did not know, after five minutes, whether he was any good or not. But at least the paintings were interesting.

  ‘You’ve shown your work in Denmark?’ Ingham asked.

  ‘No, only Paris.’ Jensen replied.

  Suddenly, Ingham did not believe him. Or was he wrong? And did it really matter? Ingham looked at his watch under a light globe—twelve-thirty-five. He managed to say a few complimentary things, which pleased Jensen.

  Jensen was restless and shifting. Ingham sensed that he was as hungry as a wolf, maybe physically hungry, certainly emotionally starving. Ingham sensed also that he was a shadow to Jensen, just a form in the room, solid to the touch, but nothing more. Jensen knew nothing and had really asked nothing about him. Yet they might both be in the bed in the upstairs room this moment.

  ‘I’d better be taking off.’ Ingham said.

  ‘Yes. A pity. Just when it’s getting nice and cool.’

  Ingham asked to use the toilet. Jensen came with him and put on the light. It was a hole in a porcelain floor which sloped downward. Just outside, a tap on the wall dripped slowly into a bucket. Ingham supposed Jensen tossed a bucket of water into the hole now and then.

  ‘Good night, and thanks for letting me visit.’ Ingham said, holding out his hand.

  Jensen gripped it firmly. ‘A pleasure. Come again. I’ll see you at Melik’s. Or the Plage.’

  ‘Or visit me. I’ve got a bungalow and a refrigerator. I can even cook.’ Ingham smiled. He was perhaps overdoing it, just because he didn’t want Jensen to think he had any unfriendly feelings. ‘How do I get back to the main road?’

  ‘Go left outside the door. Take the first left, then first right, and you’ll come out on the road.’

  Ingham went out. The light from Jensen’s street-lamp was of no use as soon as he turned the first corner. The street was only six feet wide, not meant for cars. The white walls on either side of him, poked with deep-set black windows, seemed strangely silent—strangely, because there was usually some kind of noise coming from any Arabic house. Ingham had never been in a residential section so late. He tripped on something and pitched forward, catching himself on both hands just in time to avoid hitting the road with his face. It had felt like a rolled-up blanket. He pushed at the thing with his foot, and realized he was slightly tight. It was a man asleep. Ingham had touched a pair of legs.

  ‘Hell of a place to sleep,’ Ingham murmured.

  No sound from the sleeping form.

  Out of curiosity, Ingham struck a match. Coverless, the man lay with one arm crumpled under him. A black scarf was around his neck. Black trousers, soiled white shirt. Then Ingham saw that the black scarf was red, that it was blood. The match burnt his fingers, and Ingham struck another and bent closer. There was blood all over the ground under the man’s head. Under his jaw was a long glistening cut.

  ‘Hey!’ Ingham said. He touched the man’s shoulder, gripped it convulsively, and just as suddenly pulled his hand back. The body was cool. Ingham looked around him and saw nothing but blackness and the vague white forms of houses. His match had gone out.

  He thought of going back to get Jensen. At the same time, he drifted away from the corpse, drifted on away from Jensen, towards the road. It wasn’t his business.

  The end of the alley showed a pale light from the streetlights of the road. His car was a hundred yards to the left, down by Melik’s. When Ingham was some thirty yards away from his car, he saw the old humpbacked Arab in the baggy trousers standing by the right rear window. Ingham ran towards him.

  ‘Get the hell away!’ he yelled.

  The Arab scurried with a surprising agility, hunched over, and disappeared into a black street on the right.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ Ingham muttered.

  There was no one about, except two men standing under a tree in the light that came from the Plage’s front windows.

  Ingham unlocked his car, and glanced into the back seat when the light came on. Hadn’t his beach towel (his own, not the hotel’s) and his canvas jacket been on the seat? Of course. One rear window was open three inches. The Arab had fished the things out. He cursed the Arab with a new fury. He slammed the door and went to the dark street into which the Arab had vanished.

  ‘Son of a bitch, I hope it kills you!’ he shouted, so angry now that his face burnt. ‘Bastard son of a bitch!’

  That the Arab couldn’t understand didn’t matter at all.

  6

  THE next morning, lying in bed at 9 a.m. with the sun already warm through the shutters, Ingham did not remember getting home. He did not remember anything after cursing the humped Arab with the yellow-tan, filthy turban. Then he remembered the corpse. My God, yes, a corpse. Ingham imagined it a hell of a cut, maybe the kind that nearly severed the neck, so that if he had lifted the man, the head might have fallen off. No, he wouldn’t tell Ina that part of the evening. He wouldn’t tell anyone about the corpse, he thought. People might say, ‘Why didn’t you report it?’ Ingham realized he was ashamed of himself. Regardless of the red tape that might have followed, he should have reported the thing. He still could report it. The time he saw the body might be of some significance. But he wasn’t going to.

  He sprang out of bed and took a shower.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Mokta had set his breakfast-tray on the windowsill near his bed. That was good service. Ingham ate in shorts and shirt, sitting on the edge of his chair. He was thinking of a letter he would write to Ina, and before he finished his coffee, he pushed the tray aside and began it on his typewriter.

  July 1, 19—

  Sat. A.M.

  Darling,

  A strange day yesterday. In fact all these days are strange. I was furious not to have more news from you. I’ll hold this till I hear from you. Would you mind telling me why he killed himself and secondly why were you so thrown by it?

  It seems fantastic, but I have 47 pages done on my book and I think it is going along pretty well. But I am horribly lonely. Such a new sensation for me, it’s almost interesting. I thought I had been lonely many times before and I have been, but never anything like this. I’ve set myself a mild schedule about working, because if I hadn’t that, I think I’d go to pieces. On the other hand, that’s just in the last week, since hearing about John. Before that, the days were sort of empty here, thanks to no news at all from John (or from you for that matter) but since his death, the bottom has fallen out—of what? Tunisia, maybe. Not me. Of course I’ll leave soon, after cruising around the country a bit, since I’m here.

  Last night I had dinner with a
Danish painter who turned out to be a faggot and made a mild pass. He is lonely, too, poor guy, but I am sure he can find a lot of bed-companions among the boys here. Homosexuality is not against their religion, but alcohol is, and some towns are dry. Stealing is apparently okay, too. One old bastard swiped my canvas jacket and a towel last night from the back seat of my car while I was visiting the Dane—to look at his paintings, ha! I detest this particular Arab, and I know I shouldn’t. Why detest anyone? One doesn’t, one just focuses a lot of emotions of a nasty kind on one person, and there you are, hating something or somebody. Darling Ina, I have focused the opposite kind of emotions on you, you are everything tangible that I like and love, so why do you make me suffer now with this ghastly long silence? The days may flit by for you, but they drag here. I can see I’m going to post this off today express, even if I don’t hear from you….

  Since he did not hear from Ina in the morning post, he sent the letter express from the post office at 4 p.m. There was nothing from Ina in the afternoon post, either.

  He had dinner with Adams in a fishing town called La Goulette, near Tunis. The town bore a funny similarity to Coney Island, not that it had amusements or hot-dog stands, but it was the elongated shape of the town, the lowness of its houses, the atmosphere of the sea. It also looked rather crummy and cheap and unspoilt. Ingham’s first thought was to inquire about hotels here, but the barman at the bar they visited told him there were none. The waiter and the proprietor of the restaurant where they had dinner assured Ingham of the same thing. The waiter knew of a place where they let rooms, but this sounded too sketchy to bother investigating, at least at that hour.

  That evening, Adams bored Ingham to a degree. Adams was launched again on the virtues of democracy for everyone, Christian morals for everyone. (‘Everyone?’ Ingham interrupted once, so loudly that the next table turned to look at him.) He thought of the happy pagans, Christless, maybe syphilis-less, too, blissful. But in fact, where were they these days? Christianity and atom-bomb testing had spread themselves just about everywhere. I swear if he gets on to Vietnam, I’ll burst a vein, Ingham said to himself. But realising the absurdity of his emotions against this absurd little man, Ingham controlled himself, remembered that he had enjoyed Adams’s company many times, and reminded himself that he would feel like a fool to make an enemy of Adams, whom he encountered once or twice a day on the hotel grounds or on the beach. His anger was only frustration, Ingham realized, frustration in every aspect of his life just now—except perhaps in his novel-in-progress.