Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery

by Patricia Highsmith

  And here he was, Ingham thought, with both feet on the ground—presumably—and where did it get him? It got him to melancholy.

  John Castlewood had been under his own illusion, because what else was a state of being ‘in love’? Blissful if reciprocated, tragic if it wasn’t. Anyway, John had had his illusion, and then unfortunately—zip—dead. Despite her sympathy, Ina must have given him a flat no, finally.

  8

  THE next morning, Ingham made a determined effort, and wrote two pages of his book. He satisfied himself that he was on the rails again. He then stopped and wrote a letter to Ina.

  July 5, 19—

  Dearest Ina,

  Thanks for your letter which came yesterday at last, a small bang for the otherwise quiet Fourth here. I agree, there does seem to be quite a lot that needs to be explained, though maybe I should give up on suicides, at least John’s, as I didn’t know him at all well and feel now that I didn’t know him at all. What else was he upset about besides you? I admit I am annoyed that he chose my apartment to do it in. May I say, without seeming too coarse and unfeeling, that I hope he didn’t mess things up too much? I liked that apartment, until now.

  It would be nice if you explained your own feelings a bit more. Just how were you sympathetic? Whatever you were, it seems to have been the wrong thing for John. Did you like or love him at all? Or do you now? Of course I can see, unless I’m wildly off the beam, that you never made him any promises (as you said) or else he would not have wanted to do away with himself. What I really can’t understand, darling, is why you took so damned long to write to me. If you knew what it’s like here, no old chums to talk to, too hot to work comfortably except early morning and evening, no letter for a whole month from the girl I love — It wasn’t a nice month for me. What you haven’t explained is why you were so upset, you couldn’t write me for twenty-seven days or so, then only a note, until your letter a few days after that. I love you, I want you, I need you. Now more than ever.

  I’ll try it here for another week, I think. I have to think periods of time like that, otherwise I’d feel lost—as if I don’t already. But work is going reasonably well (my book) and I’d like to drive around and see some more of Tunisia, even though the days will be getting hotter, reaching a crescendo or an inferno, I am told, in August. I’ll send this express. Please write me at once. I hope you’ll be calmer by now, darling. I wish you were here, in this rather pretty room with me, and we could talk and—other things.

  All my love, darling.

  Howard

  In the next days, Mokta brought no news of his missing jacket, shoes or jewellery, and Ingham gave it up. The country was vast. His minuscule possessions had been sucked up and lost for ever. But as the days went on, the loss of Lotte’s tiepin, which he almost never wore, and of his grandfather’s cuff-links, began to rankle. Compared to what the things meant to him, the pittance the robber would get for them was irritating to think about. Ingham had delayed reactions, heightened bitternesses (heightened joys, sometimes, too), but his realization of this did little to help. Whenever he saw the old Arab who had stolen from his car definitely, and who might have stolen from his bungalow, Ingham felt like kicking him in whatever lay in the seat of those sordid pants. As a matter of fact, the Arab now scurried away at the sight of Ingham in Hammamet, sidling like an old crab into any alley or street that was nearest. It would be even excusable to kick him, Ingham thought, because if a policeman arrived—there was an occasional policeman in tan shirt and trousers on the street in Hammamet—he could say with truth that he had seen Abdullah in flagrante the night of June 30th – July 1st. Ingham remembered the date, because it was the night he had seen the corpse also, and he had thought of speaking to the police about it. He hadn’t spoken to the police, not only because he didn’t relish becoming involved with them, but because he foresaw that no one would really care.

  Ingham had dinner one evening with OWL at Melik’s, and mentioned his robbery of a few nights before.

  ‘One of the boys, I’m sure of it. And I’ll bet I know which one,’ said OWL.

  “Which one?’

  “The short dark one.’

  They were all short and dark, except Mokta and Hassim.

  “The one called Hammed. Has his mouth sort of open all the time.’ OWL demonstrated, and looked somewhat like a hare-lip, or rabbit. “Of course, I’m not sure, but I don’t like his manner. He’s brought my towels a couple of times. I saw him drifting around my bungalow one day, not doing anything, just drifting around looking at the windows. Did you lock your shutters tonight?’

  ‘I did.’ Since the robbery, Ingham had locked them from the inside whenever he was out.

  “You’ll lose your lighter next, then your typewriter. A miracle they didn’t take that. Obviously the robber had to get away with something he could conceal—your shoes and stud box wrapped up in the jacket, probably.’

  “What do you think of these people, by the way? Their way of life?’

  “Ah-h! I don’t know where to begin!’ Adams chuckled. “They have their Allah, and very tolerant he must be. They’re reconciled to fate. Make no great effort, that’s their motto. Everything by rote in school, you know, no thinking involved. How does one change a way of life like this? Petty dishonesty is their way of life. Make a handful honest—and they’ll be cheated by the majority, and go back to dishonesty as a means of self-preservation. Can you blame them?’

  “No,’ Ingham agreed. He really did see OWL’s point.

  ‘Our country was lucky. We started out so well, with men like Tom Paine, Jefferson. What ideas they had, and they wrote them down for us! Benjamin Franklin. We may have departed now and then from them- but my goodness, they’re still there, in our Constitution…’

  Was Adams going to say it was all spoilt by Sicilians, Puerto Ricans, Polish Jews ? Ingham didn’t care to ask Adams what had spoilt America’s idealism. He let Adams ramble on.

  ‘… Yes! That might be the subject of my next tape. The corruption of American idealism. You never get so far, you never make so many friends, you know, as when you tell the truth. There’s always some new failure to talk about. And let’s face it, our potential friends’—here Adams beamed, the happy squirrel again—‘are more interested in our failures than in our successes. Failures make people human. They’re jealous of us, because they think we’re supermen, invincible empire-builders …’ On and on it went.

  And the curious thing, Ingham thought, was that it didn’t sound so bad tonight. It sounded true, and almost liberal. No, the chief thing in which Adams was wrong, rotten even, was in saying that communism or atheism was wrong for other people, any and all other people. Well, one rotten apple could spoil the whole barrel, Ingham thought, to use an adage which would surely please OWL. What it always came down to was the dreary fact that men were not as equal as Adams thought, that free enterprise sent certain ones to the top and certain others to the bottom, into the poverty that Adams so detested. But wasn’t it possible to have a socialist system with some capacity for competition, some room for personal reward? Of course. Ingham dreamed, while Adams spun.

  ‘Birth control! Now that’s vital. A subject also that I have no fear in bringing up on my tapes. Who’s more aware of it than China? And who’s more aware of China than the Soviet Union? Breeders, the curse of humanity! And I don’t omit the United States. Poughkeepsie is a hotbed, the biggest unemployment relief record in the States, the last I heard, mostly due to Puerto Ricans and Negroes. The biggest families, fatherless technically …’

  Hotbed. On it went. And Ingham couldn’t find a thing to deny in what Adams was saying. Of course one could cite—if one had the statistics in hand—Anglo-Saxon families guilty also of ten children, father with no job, maybe also non-existent. But Ingham merely listened.

  Jensen came in, without his dog.

  ‘You know each other?’ Ingham asked. ‘Mr Jensen, Mr Adams.’

  ‘Won’t you join us?’ Adams asked pleasantly. />
  ‘Have you had dinner?’ Ingham asked.

  1 don’t care to eat,’ Jensen said, sitting down.

  ‘A good day’s work?’ Ingham asked, feeling something was the matter with Jensen.

  ‘No, not since noon.’ Jensen put his lean forearm on the table. ‘I think they’ve stolen my dog. He’s missing since eleven o’clock this morning. I let him out for a pee.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Ingham said. ‘You looked around?’

  ‘All over the’—Jensen might have repressed a tired curse—‘neighbourhood. Went around calling him everywhere.’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Adams. 1 remember your dog. I saw him many times.’

  ‘He may be still alive,’ Jensen said, somewhat defiannty.

  ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to imply he wasn’t,’ Adams said. ‘Is he apt to go off with strangers?’

  ‘He’s apt to tear them apart,’ Jensen said. ‘He hates crooked Arabs, and he can smell them a mile off. That’s why I’m afraid they have killed him already. I walked all the streets calling him—until people were yelling at me to shut up.’

  ‘Any idea who did it?’ Ingham asked. Jensen took so long to answer—he looked as if he were in a daze—that Ingham asked, ‘You think they might be holding him for a reward?’

  ‘I hope so. But so far nobody’s told me.’

  ‘Would he be likely to eat any poisoned meat?’ Adams asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s not a dog to gobble up putrid fish on the beach.’ Jensen’s English was as usual eloquent and distinct.

  Ingham felt very sorry for Jensen. He felt the dog was gone, dead. Ingham glanced at Adams. Adams was trying to be practical, Ingham saw, trying to suggest something Jensen might do.

  ‘They’ll toss his head in the door tomorrow morning.’ Jensen said. ‘Or maybe his tail.’ He laughed, grimaced, and Ingham saw his lower front teeth. ‘A coffee,’ Jensen said to the fat boy who had appeared at the table. ‘We shall see.’ Jensen said. ‘I am sorry to be so melancholic tonight.’

  They drank their coffee.

  Adams said he had to be getting home. Ingham asked Jensen if he would like to go somewhere for another coffee or a drink. Adams did not care to join them.

  ‘How about the Fourati?’ Ingham asked. ‘It’s cheerful, at least.’ It wasn’t particularly, it was just an idea.

  They got into Ingham’s car. Ingham dropped Adams at the bungalows, then he and Jensen went on to the Fourati. Jensen was in levis, but his clothes were always clean, and he looked rather handsome in them. The Fourati had bright lights in its bar. Beyond the bar, people danced on a terrace to a strenuous three-piece band which was augmented unmercifully by amplifiers. Ingham and Jensen stood at the bar, looking over the dozen or so tables. Ingham felt empty, purposeless, yet not lonely. He was staring, looking at faces, simply because he had not seen them before, because they were not Arab, and because he could tell a little bit about the faces, since they were French, American, or English, and some of them German. Ingham’s eyes met the eyes of a dark-haired girl in a white, sleeveless dress. After a second or two, Ingham looked down at his drink—a rum on the rocks.

  ‘A little stuffy.’ Ingham said, raising his voice over the music. ‘The people, I mean.’

  ‘Lots of Germans, usually.’ Jensen said, and sipped his beer. ‘I saw the most beautiful boy here once. In March. He must have been having a birthday party. He looked sixteen. French. He looked at me. I never spoke to him, never saw him again.’

  Ingham nodded. His eyes moved again to the woman in the white dress. She had smooth brown arms. Now she smiled at him. She was with a blond, greying man in a white jacket, who might have been English, a plumpish woman in her forties, and a younger man with dark hair. Her husband? Ingham resolved not to look again at the table. He felt very attracted to the woman in the white dress. How silly could you get in a hot climate?

  ‘Another drink?’ Ingham asked.

  ‘Coffee.’

  The one boy behind the counter was having a hard time keeping up with orders, so it was a while before their coffee arrived.

  Beyond the bar, through the open window on their left, clashing music came now from an Arabic band that was entertaining the people in the dimly lighted hotel gardens. Christ, what a hell of a noise, Ingham thought. He only hoped that the few minutes had cheered Jensen a little, and taken Mm away from thoughts of his dog. Ingham felt sure he would not see Hasso again. He imagined Jensen going back to Copenhagen alone, a little bitter. How could Jensen help it?

  Ingham invited Jensen to the bungalow. Of course, Jensen accepted. But tonight it was out of loneliness, Ingham realized, nothing to do with sex.

  ‘Have you a big family in Denmark?’ Ingham asked They were walking along the sandy road towards the bungalow with the aid of Jensen’s flashlight, which he always carried in his back pocket.

  ‘Just a mother and father and a sister. My older brother committed suicide when I was fifteen. You know, the gloomy Danes. No, you say melancholy Danes.’

  ‘Do you write them often?’ Ingham opened his door. He went tense in the darkness, before he put on a light and saw that there was no one in the room.

  ‘Oh, often enough.’

  Ingham saw that his question about Jensen’s family hadn’t lifted Jensen’s spirits in the least.

  ‘A very nice room,’ Jensen said. ‘Simple. I like that.’

  Ingham brought out his Scotch and glasses and ice. They both sat on Ingham’s bed, beside which was a table they could use. Ingham was conscious of their respective gloominess, a gloominess for different reasons. He wasn’t going to mention Ina to Jensen, and he wasn’t going to mention the robbery he had had, as it seemed trivial. And perhaps Jensen’s gloom was not entirely due to his dog, but to things he had no intention of telling to Ingham. What did one do in such circumstances to make life a little more bearable, Ingham wondered? Just sit, a yard or more apart, in the same room, silent? Able to speak each other’s language, but still silent?

  Within fifteen minutes, Ingham was uneasy and bored, though Jensen had begun to talk about a trip he had made to an inland desert town with an American friend a few months ago. They had run into sandstorms that had almost flayed the clothes off them, and they had been very cold at night, sleeping outdoors. His dog had been with them. Ingham’s mind drifted. He believed, suddenly, that Ina had been in love with Castlewood, that she had slept with him. My God, maybe even in his own apartment! No, that was a bit too much. John had his own place, and he lived alone. He had thought Ina was so solid- solid physically in a very pleasant and attractive way, solid in her attitude towards him, in her love for him. Ingham admitted to himself that he had even been under the illusion that Ina cared more for him than he did for her. What an ass he had been! He must read her letter, her damned ambiguous letter, again tonight, after Jensen had left. He realised he had had quite enough to drink, and his glass was still half full, but he’d ponder the letter anyway and maybe a flash of intuition would enable him to understand it better, to know what had really happened. Why was Ina so coy and devious, if she and John had slept together? She wasn’t the kind of girl to call a spade a—a what? Anyway, she called a lay a roll in the hay, or just called it going to bed with someone. She’d been quite frank with him about a couple of her affairs since her marriage.

  Jensen left just before one o’clock, and Ingham dropped him off at his street near Melik’s, though Jensen had offered, even begged politely, to walk home. As he got back into his car, Ingham heard Jensen’s retreating voice in his alley, calling, ‘Hasso! Hasso!’ A whistle. A rising tone of a curse, something in Danish, a defiant yelp. Ingham remembered the corpse in that same street. A tiny street, but a street full of passion.

  Ingham studied Ina’s letter once more. He got no further, He went to bed vaguely angry, and decidedly unhappy.

  9

  IT WAS TWO OR THREE DAYS LATER, in the morning, that Ingham saw the brunette girl of the Fourati on the beach. She was in a beach
chair, and a chair beside her was empty. A small boy was trying to sell her something out of a basket.

  ‘Mais non, merci. Pas d’argent aujourd,hui!, she was saying, smiling but a bit annoyed.

  Ingham had just had his noon swim, and was smoking a cigarette, walking along the edge of the water, carrying his robe. From the girl’s accent, he supposed her English or American.

  ‘Are you having trouble?’ Ingham asked.

  “Not really. I just can’t get rid of him.’ She was American.

  €I have no money either, but a cigarette’s just as good.’ Ingham took two cigarettes from his pack. He thought the boy was selling seashells. The boy seized the cigarettes and ran away on bare feet.

  ‘I thought of cigarettes, too, but I don’t smoke and I haven’t any.’ She had very dark brown eyes. Her face was smooth and tanned, her hair also smooth and pulled straight back from her forehead. Almond was the word that came to Ingham when he looked at her.

  ‘I thought you were at the Fourati,’ Ingham said.

  ‘I am. But a friend invited me for lunch here.’

  Ingham glanced up the beach towards the hotel for the friend—he assumed a man—who must be coming back at any minute. There was a yellow and white towel and a pair of sunglasses on the empty chair beside her. Suddenly Ingham knew, or at least believed, that he would see her this evening, that they would have dinner, and that they would go to bed together, somewhere. ‘Have you been in Hammamet long?’ The usual questions, the protocol.