Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery

by Patricia Highsmith

  ‘There’s more there in a pot.’ Adams said, smiling, gesturing quickly towards the kitchen. ‘Heat it up when you wake up again. Since you missed a night’s sleep, I think you ought to sleep the rest of the afternoon. Got the Entero-Vioforms handy?’

  Ingham had. Adams brought him a fresh glass of water, then left. Ingham slept again.

  That evening, Adams brought eggs and bread, and made a supper of scrambled eggs and toast and tea. Ingham was feeling much better. Adams took his leave before nine o’clock, so Ingham could sleep.

  ‘Thank you very much, Francis,’ Ingham said. He could smile now. ‘I really feel you saved my life.’

  ‘Nonsense! A little Christian charity? It’s a pleasure! Good night, Howard, my boy. See you tomorrow!’

  7

  A COUPLE of days later, on the 4th of July, a Tuesday, Ingham received a long airmail envelope from a clerk at the Heine’s main desk. It was from Ina, and Ingham could tell there were at least two sheets of airmail paper in it. He started to go back to his bungalow for privacy, then realized he couldn’t wait, turned back to find an empty sofa to sit on, then changed his mind again and headed for the bar. No one was in the bar, not even a waiter. He sat by a window for light, but out of the sun.

  June 28, 19—

  Dear Howard,

  At last a moment to write. In fact I am staying home from the office today, though I have homework as usual.

  The events of the last month are rather chaotic. I don’t know where or how to begin, so I will just plunge in. John—first of all—killed himself in your apartment. I had given him the keys once before but only to take your letters from the mailbox (mailbox key being on your ring) and he must have taken the opportunity to have some others made. Anyway, he took an overdose, and because no one thought of looking in your apartment for four days—and anyway when I went there I had no idea I’d find John—we all simply thought he had left town, maybe gone to Long Island. He was of course in a bad state. He had not lost his nerve about the Tunisia work—but he announced that he was in love with me. I was completely surprised. It had never crossed my mind. I was sympathetic. He meant it. He felt guilty because of you. Maybe I was too sympathetic But I told him I loved you. John told me this in the last days of May, just after you left. He must have taken the pills the night of June 10th, a Saturday. He had told everyone he was going away for the weekend. One could say he did it to spite both of us—destroy himself in your apartment, on your bed (but not in it). I did not lead him on, but I admit I was sympathetic and concerned. I made no promises to him…

  A waiter came and asked what he wanted. Ingham murmured, ‘Rien, merci,’ and stood up. He went out on the terrace and read the rest of the letter standing up in the sun.

  … but I hope you can see why I was upset. I don’t think he told anyone else of his feelings for me, at least no one that I know. I am sure a psychiatrist would say his suicide was due to other things too (I don’t even know what, honesdy) and that his sudden emotion for me (itself odd) tipped things the wrong way. He said he felt guilty and could not work with you because of his feelings for me. I asked him to write to you and tell you. I thought it was not for me to do…

  The rest of her letter was about her brother Joey, about a serial she had to edit which she thought would be a winner for CBS, about packing up John’s things from his apartment, assisted by a couple of friends of John’s whom she had not met before. She thanked him for the Tunisian vest, and assured him there was nothing like it in New York.

  Why had she had anything to do with packing up John’s things, Ingham wondered. Surely John had had a lot of friends closer to him than Ina. I did not lead him on, but I admit I was sympathtic and concerned. What did that mean, exactly?

  Ingham walked back to his bungalow. He walked steadily, and he looked down at the sand.

  ‘Hello-o! Good morning!’ It was Adams hailing him, Adams carrying his silly Neptune spear, wearing his flippers.

  ‘Good morning,’ Ingham called back, forcing a smile.

  ‘Got some news?’ Adams asked, glancing at the letter in Ingham’s hand.

  ‘Not much, Fm afraid.’ Ingham waved the letter casually, and walked on, not stopping, not even slowing.

  He felt he did not breathe until he closed the door of his little house. That glaring sun, that brightness I It was eleven o’clock. Ingham had closed the shutters. The room was rather dark for a minute. He left the shutters closed.

  Killed himself in his apartment. Of all the filthy, sloppy things to do, Ingham thought. Of all vulgar dramatics I Knowing, no doubt, that he’d be found by Ina Pallant, since she was the only person with the key.

  Ingham became aware that he was walking round and round his work-table, and he flung himself on the bed. The bed was not yet made up. The boy was late this morning. Ingham held the letter over his head and started reading it again, but couldn’t bear to finish it. It sounded as if Ina might have given John some encouragement. If she hadn’t, why mention it, or say that she hadn’t? Sympathetic. Wouldn’t most girls have said—more or less—it’s no soap, old pal, you’d better forget it? Ina wasn’t the mushy, comforting type. Had she really liked him? John, in the last fifteen minutes, had become a loathsome weakling to Ingham. Ingham tried and failed to see what about him could have appealed to Ina. His naivet6? His rather juvenile enthusiasm, his self-confidence? But it didn’t show much self-confidence to have committed suicide.

  Well, what now? No reason to wait for another letter. No reason not to leave Tunisia.

  It was funny, he thought, that Ina hadn’t said in her letter that she loved him. She hadn’t said anything reassuring in that direction. I told him that I loved you. That wasn’t very forceful. He felt a rush of resentment against Ina, a nasty feeling quite new to him in regard to her. He would answer Ina’s letter, but not now. Wait at least until this afternoon, maybe even tomorrow. He wished he had someone to talk to about it, but there was no one. What could Adams say, for instance?

  That afternoon, though Ingham had gone for a swim and had a short nap, he found that he could not work. His last few pages were pretty smooth, he knew how he wanted to go on (his hero Dennison had just appropriated $100,000, and was about to tinker with the company books), but the words would not come to him. His mind was shattered, at least that part of it which had to do with writing fiction;

  Ingham got into his car, taking a towel and swimming trunks just in case, and drove to Sousse. He arrived at five o’clock. It was a city, compared to Hammamet. An American warship was at anchor beside the long, entry-forbidden pier, and there were several white-uniformed sailors and officers drifting about the town, their faces sun-tanned, their expressions fixed at a certain stony neutrality, Ingham felt. Ingham avoided staring at them, though he wanted to. An Arab boy approached him, offering a carton of Camels at not a bad price, but Ingham shook his head.

  He stared into shop-windows. Inferior blue jeans, and lots of white trousers. Ingham laughed suddenly. A pair of blue jeans had the rectangular Levi-Strauss label counterfeited pretty well, glossy white, stapled to the pants, but the printed letters said, ‘This Is A Genuine Pair of Louise’. The bottom part of the phoney label trailed off shamelessly in printer’s dots. The forgers had given up.

  For a while, he daydreamed about his novel. That was a situation he knew and understood. He knew the way Dennison looked, just how big his waistline was, and what made him tick. His theme was an old one, via Raskolnikov, through Nietzsche’s superman: had one the right to seize power under certain circumstances? That was all very interesting from a moral point of view. Ingham was somewhat more interested in the state of Dennison’s mind, in his existence during the period in which he led two lives. He was interested in the fact that the double life at last fooled Dennison: that was what made Dennison a nearly perfect embezzler. Dennison was morally unaware that he was committing a felony, but he was aware that society and the law, for reasons that he did not even attempt to comprehend, did not approve of what
he was doing. For this reason only, he took some precautions. Ingham knew the relationship of the people around Dennison, the girl Dennison had discarded when he was twenty-six and intended to pick up again (but he would not be able to). His novel was more real and definite than Ina, John or anything else. But that was to be expected, Ingham thought. Or was it?

  The sight of an old Arab in baggy red pants, with turban, leaning on a stick, made Ingham draw in his breath. He had thought he was Abdullah of Hammamet, but of course he wasn’t. Just a dead ringer. It was uncanny how alike some of them could look. Ingham supposed they thought the same thing about tourists.

  He shuffled through a narrow, crowded passage into a souk, bumped constantly on arms and back. He felt fingers at his left hip pocket, and glanced around in time to see a boy darting to the left between shopping nets and the billowing, tan burnouses of several women. But his billfold wasn’t in that pocket, it was in a left front pocket.

  Ingham had a cold lemonade on the strip of pavement down the main street. He sat at a table under a big umbrella against the sun. Then he got back into his car and headed for Hammamet. The dry countryside, empty of people, was a relief. The land was a deep yellow tan. River-beds were wide, cracked and quite dry. Ingham had to pause two or three times to let flocks of sheep clatter across the road. They had mud-caked behinds, and were guided by very small boys or old barefoot women with sticks.

  The Reine de Hammamet’s bungalows struck him as chichi that evening. He did not like his bungalow now, despite its cleanliness and comfort and the little stack of manuscript on the back comer of his work-table. He ought to leave. The room reminded him of his plans to work here with John. The room reminded him of happy letters he had written to Ina. Ingham took a shower. He supposed he would go to Melik’s for dinner. He’d had no lunch.

  When he opened his closet to get his blue blazer, he didn’t see it. He glanced around the room to see if he’d left it on a chair. Ingham sighed, realizing he’d been robbed. But he had locked his door today. He hadn’t, however, fastened all the shutters from the inside, a fact which he verified now by a glance. Two out of four were not fastened. Ingham looked at his stack of shirts on the shelf above his clothes. The new blue linen shirt was missing. Stud box? Ingham slid a drawer open. It was gone, and an empty circle remained in a jumble of clean socks.

  Oddly enough, they hadn’t taken his typewriter. Ingham looked around, at his suitcase above his closet, at his shoes in the bottom of the closet. Yes, they’d taken his new pair of black shoes. What would an Arab do with English shoes, Ingham wondered. But the stud box. There’d been the nice old gold links Ina had giveh him before he left America, and a pair of silver ones that had belonged to Ingham’s grandfather. And the tiepin from Lotte, platinum.

  Tor Christ’s sake,’ Ingham murmured. ‘Maybe they’ll even get thirty bucks for it all, if they’re sharp.’ And of course they were sharp. Ingham wondered if it was the old bastard in the red pants? Surely not. He wouldn’t wander a kilometre from Hammamet just to rob him.

  Travellers cheques ? Ingham had those in the pocket of his suitcase lid. He pulled the suitcase down, and found they were still there.

  Ingham went over to the bungalow headquarters to find Mokta.

  Mokta was sorting towels and talking in Arabic in an explanatory way to the directrice. Mokta saw Ingham, and flashed a smile. Ingham indicated that he would wait outside on the terrace.

  Mokta came out sooner than Ingham had expected. He swept a hand across his forehead to illustrate the ordeal he had just been through, and glanced behind him. ‘You want to see me, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Someone was in my house today. A few things were stolen. Do you know who could have done it?’ Ingham spoke softly, though there was no one on the terrace.

  Mokta’s grey eyes were wide, shocked. ‘But no, sir. I knew you were away this afternoon. Your car was gone. I remarked it. I was here all afternoon. I didn’t see anyone around your bungalow.’

  Ingham told him what they had taken. Tf you hear of anything—if you see any of it—tell me, will you? Fll give you five dinars if you can get anything back.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I don’t think it is any of these boys. Honestly, sir. They are honest boys.’

  ‘One of the gardeners, do you think?’ He offered Mokta a cigarette, which Mokta accepted.

  Mokta shrugged, but it was not an indifferent shrug. His thin body was tense with the situation. ‘I don’t know all the gardeners. Some of them are new.—Let me look around. If you tell the directrice’—a flash of hands in a negative gesture—‘she will attack all of us, all the boys.’

  ‘No, I shall not tell the directrice or the management. I’ll leave it to you.’ He slapped Mokta’s shoulder.

  Ingham went to his car and drove to Melik’s. It was late, there was not much left on the menu, but Ingham had lost what appetite he had, and sat merely for the company around him, whose conversation he could not understand. There were no English or French tonight. The Arabic talk—all male voices—sounded guttural, threatening, angry, but Ingham knew this meant nothing. They were having a perfectly ordinary evening. Melik, short, plump and smiling, came over and asked where his friend M. Ahdam was tonight? Melik spoke quite a good French.

  ‘I haven’t seen him today. I went to Sousse.’ It was of no importance, yet it was nice to say to somebody, and Arabs, Ingham knew from the sheer quantity of their speech, must say even less important things in a more verbose manner. ‘How’s business ?’

  ‘Ah—it goes. People get afraid of the heat But of course lots of French still come in August, the hottest time of the year.’

  They chatted for a few minutes. Melik’s two sons, the thin one who slunk like Groucho Marx, the fat one who rolled, ministered to the two or three tables that were occupied. From below, Ingham caught a pleasant whiff of baking bread. There was a bakery just next door which functioned during the night. Ingham drank two cups of sweet coffee, not bothering to ask them to make it without sugar. During his second cup, the Dane arrived with his dog on a leash, and stood looking around from the threshold of the terrace, as if to see if a certain friend was here. He saw Ingham, and came towards him slowly, smiling.

  ‘Good evening.’ Jensen said. ‘All by yourself tonight?’

  ‘Evening. Yes. Have a seat.’ There were three empty chairs at Ingham’s table.

  Jensen sat down opposite, made a sound to his dog, and the dog lay down.

  ‘How is life?’ Ingham asked.

  ‘Ah, well, excellent for working. A little boring.’

  Ingham thought that that was exactly the way it was. Jensen wore a fresh denim shirt. Above it, his lean face was brown, darker than his hair. His white teeth gleamed when he spoke. Jensen slumped, one elbow on the back of his chair, like a man discouraged.

  ‘Have some wine.’ Ingham yelled, ‘Asma!’ to empty space. Sometimes someone heard, sometimes not.

  Jensen said he had a bottle of wine here, but Ingham insisted on their drinking his. The boy brought another glass.

  ‘Are you working?’ Jensen asked.

  ‘Not today. I was in a bad mood.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘Oh, no, just a bad day,’ Ingham said.

  “The trouble with this country is that the weather is all the same. Predictable. One has to get used to it, accept it, or it can bore one to extinction.’ Jensen pronounced ‘extinction’ with clarity, like an Englishman. ‘Today I painted an imaginary bird in flight. He flies downward. Tomorrow I shall paint two birds in one picture, one flying up, one down. They will look like opposite tulips.—There are few basic shapes, you know, the egg which is a variation of the circle, the bird which resembles the fish, the tree and its branches which resembles its own roots and also the bronchii in the lungs. All the more complex forms, the key, the automobile, the typewriter, the tin-opener, are all man-made. But are they beautiful? No, they’re as ugly as man’s soul. I admit some keys are beautiful. To be beautiful, something must be stylized, that is to s
ay streamlined, which can only be achieved through being alive for centuries of time.’

  Ingham found Jensen’s monologue soothing. ‘What colour are your birds?’

  ‘Pink at present. And they’ll be pink tomorrow, I suppose, because I have a lot of pink paint made up and I may as well use it.’ Jensen yawned, discreetly. He gave his dog an offhand slap, because the dog had growled as an Arab walked by the table. Jensen turned to look at the Arab briefly. ‘Would you like to come to my house for coffee?’ Jensen asked.

  Ingham begged off, saying that he was rather tired because he had driven to Sousse and back. What really deterred him, he thought, was the idea of walking by that particular spot in the alley where he had seen the corpse. Ingham wanted to ask Jensen if anything had happened that night, after the quarrelling they had heard down in his street, but Ingham repressed it. He didn’t want to hear about a corpse and try to feign surprise.

  Jensen ordered coffee.

  Ingham stood up and took his leave when the coffee arrived.

  Back in the bungalow, Ingham thought of adding to his letter in progress to Ina. Perhaps just a paragraph—sympathetic, even commiserating, positively noble. Ingham had composed the lines in his head at Melik’s. Now he read over his carefree paragraph about Our Way of Life, OWL, and his broadcasts. He couldn’t send that off to Ina, even dating the remainder of his letter with the present date, because the rest of his letter would be so different. He crumpled up the page. Ina was probably not in a mood to appreciate that kind of story now, and as a matter of fact he had promised Adams not to tell anyone. What was the matter with OWL’s silly illusions, anyway, if they kept him going, if they made him happy? The harm OWL did (and he might, by his absurdity, and by making nonsense of the Vietnam War, be doing some good) was infinitesimal compared to the harm done by America’s foreign policy makers who actually sent people off to kill people. Perhaps it took some illusions to make people happy. Dennison was happy in his idea (not really an illusion) of doing good to the underdog, furthering his friends’ businesses, bringing happiness and prosperity to several people. OWL voiced the same objectives. It was rather odd.