Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery

by Patricia Highsmith

  He drove her to the Reine de Hammamet. The desk clerk handed her a telegram.

  ‘That’s fast communication.’ Ingham said, wondering whom it could be from.

  ‘I cabled the office.’ Ina said. “This is from them.’

  Ingham waited while she read it, watched her start to frown, and saw her lips move in an inaudible ‘Damn’.

  ‘I’ve got to cable something back,’ she said to him. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Ingham nodded, and went to look for a newspaper.

  ‘What was it?’ he asked when she was finished.

  It’s about a copyright. I told them the story was in the clear, but they were still worried, so they asked me where to look. They want to check it. It’s all very tedious.’

  Ina took a cool shower, then Ingham asked if he could do the same. The cool, not too cold water felt like heaven. It was a treat also to be able to reach for Ina’s scented soap in the niche, to slip it back. There was even a huge unused white towel which he appropriated.

  ‘Ah, delicious.’ he said when he came out in the towel, barefoot.

  ‘You know, Howard —’ She was lying on the bed, propped up, smoking. ‘It’d be nice if you had a bungalow. Why don’t we take one—or two?’ she added, smiling.

  Ingham emphatically did not want to take a bungalow. ‘Well, you could—provided they’re not full up. Did you ask?’

  ‘Not yet. But your place is so uncomfortable, darling, let’s face it. That John! And you’re not broke. I don’t know why you do it.’

  ‘For a change. I got tired of my bungalow.’

  ‘What’s there to get tired of? Good kitchen and bath, everything simple and clean. Francis says you can get an air-conditioner.’

  1 wanted to see how the Arabs live, buy stuff in the market and all that.’

  ‘You can see how they live without doing it. It’s bloody uncomfortable the way they live. I saw a lot of them this morning, walking with Anders back of the fort.’

  ‘Isn’t that a fascinating section?’ Ingham smiled. “The tiling is, I’m working so well now where I am. I just think of it as a place to work, you know. I wasn’t intending to be there more than a month.’

  ‘Francis thinks you’re punishing yourself.’

  ‘Oh? I think he said that to me, too. Sounds strangely Freudian for OWL. Anyway, he’s a bit wrong. When did he say this to you, by the way?’

  ‘I ran into him on the beach this morning. Rather he hailed me—from afar. He was out in the water. I went for an early swim. So we sat on the sand and talked for a while.’ She laughed. ‘He looks so funny with those flippers and that spear, and that waterproof cap with a visor. Do you know he swims with it under water?’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  She was silent for a moment, then, ‘You know, he says you’re not telling the whole story about that night Abdullah was killed. On your terrace, Francis says.’

  ‘Um-hum,’ Ingham said, sighing. ‘First of all, no one knows if he was killed or not. No one’s seen a body.—Adams is acting like an old maid snoop about this. Why doesn’t he call the police in, if he’s so concerned?’

  ‘Well—don’t get worked up about it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Ingham lit a cigarette.

  Is that why you moved?’

  ‘Of course not.—I’m still on good terms with OWL. I moved—because of something I wanted to discuss with you, matter of fact. Or tell you about. It has to do with the book I’m writing. Essentially, it’s whether a person makes his own personality and his own standards from within himself, or whether he and the standards are the creation of the society around him. It has a little to do with my book. But I found that since being here in Tunisia, I think about these things a lot. What I mean is—the opposite of authoritarianism. And I speak mainly of morals—I suppose. My hero Dennison makes his own, you see. But granted he’s cracked.’

  Ina was listening in silence, watching him.

  ‘There were moments here in Hammamet, days and weeks, in fact, when I hadn’t any letters from you or from anybody, and I felt strange even to myself, as if I didn’t know myself. And part of it, perhaps—I know from a moral point of view—was that the Arabs all around me had different standards, different ethics. And they were in the majority, you see. This world is theirs, not mine. You know what I mean?’

  ‘And what did you do about it?’

  He laughed. ‘One doesn’t do anything. It’s like a state. It’s a very troubling state. But in a way, it was quite good for my book, I think. Because it’s concerned a little with the same thing.’

  ‘I don’t think my moral values would change, living here. ‘I’d really love some plain iced water.’

  Ingham went at once to the telephone and ordered it. Then he said, ‘Not necessarily change, but you might find them hard to practise if no one around you were practising them, for instance.’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  Ingham for some reason balked, though there were any number of examples he might have given. Petty chiselling. Or having a wife and as many mistresses as one could afford, because everyone else was enjoying the same pleasure, and to hell with what one’s wife felt about it. Well—if one’s been robbed five or six times, there might be an impulse to rob back, don’t you think? The one who doesn’t rob, or cheat a little in business deals, comes out on the short end, if everybody else is cheating.’

  ‘Hm-m,’ she said dubiously. At the knock on the door, she waved a hand at him in the direction of the bathroom.

  Ingham went into the bathroom. He stared at himself absently in the long mirror beside the tub, and thought he looked rather Roman. His hands were out of sight, clutching the towel from underneath. His feet looked absurd. He was thinking OWL was a bloody meddler. He had alienated Ina, just a little, from him, and for this Ingham detested OWL. If he told Ina about OWL’s cock-eyed broadcasts, she would know what a crack-pot he was.

  ‘All clear.’ Ina called.

  ‘Western behaviour.’ Ingham said contemptuously as he came back. ‘Any woman as attractive as you ought to have five men standing around her room in the afternoons.’

  Ina smiled. ‘But why does OWL think you’re not telling the whole truth about that night?’ She poured water into a glass.

  Ingham went to get another glass from the bathroom. ‘You ask him.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He thinks you threw something or hit the Arab somehow. Did you?’

  ‘No.’ Ingham said firmly, after only a second’s hesitation mainly from surprise. ‘I know, he’s got a door slamming, boys running around, all kinds of details about that night—considering he’s a fair distance from my bungalow.’

  ‘But it did happen on your terrace.’

  ‘The yell I heard was near.’ Ingham hated the conversation increasingly, yet he knew if he showed this, it would look a bit odd.

  ‘He said the French people behind you heard a door shut, and they were sure it was your door.’

  ‘The French people didn’t speak to me about it. Nobody spoke to anybody about Abdullah’s disappearance or anything else. Nobody’s talking about it except OWL.’

  Ina’s appraising eyes on him bothered him. It was as if OWL had infected her with his own prurient curiosity, like a disease or a fever.

  ‘That Arab might have got the coup de grâce from some other Arab.’ Ingham said, sitting down in an armchair, ‘OWL thinks the boys dragged him away and buried him somewhere. The hotel boys deny everything. They’re hushing it —’

  ‘Oh, no. OWL told me one boy said the Arab hit his head on something. They admitted that much.’

  Ingham sighed. ‘True. I forgot.’

  ‘You’re telling me the whole story. Are you, Howard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have the strangest feeling you’ve told Anders something you haven’t told me—or OWL.’

  Ingham laughed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, you’re very close to Anders, face
it. You practically live with him. I didn’t know you got along so well with queers.’

  ‘I don’t get along with them or not get along.’ Ina’s words seemed stupid. ‘I never think any more about his being queer. And by the way, I haven’t seen a single boy at his place since I moved in.’ Ingham at once regretted that. Was abstinence virtue?

  She laughed. ‘Maybe he’s in love with you.’

  ‘Oh, Ina, come off it. It’s not even funny.’ But to salvage something, the afternoon maybe, he forced a smile. It was a bad effort.

  ‘He’s very close to you—fond of you. You must know that.’

  ‘You’re imagining. Honestly, Ina.’ How could they have arrived here in just a few minutes of conversation ? He realized it was impossible to ask her this afternoon to marry him. All because of bloody OWL. ‘I do wish OWL would mind his own business. Has he been farting off about Anders, too?’

  ‘No, not at all. Darling, take it easy. It’s just what I see for myself.’

  ‘It’s not correct. Have you got a bottle of Scotch?’ She had given him one bottle.

  ‘Yes, in the closet. Back right.’

  Ingham got it. It had been opened, but only the neck of the bottle was gone. ‘Like some?’ He poured some into Ina’s extended glass, then poured for himself. ‘Anders and I get along, but there’s nothing sexual about it.’

  ‘Then maybe you don’t realize it.’

  Did she mean on his part, too? Were women always thinking about sex, of one kind or another? ‘Then it’s too damned subtle for me,’ he said, ‘and if it’s that subtle, what does it matter?’

  ‘You don’t seem to want to leave him—to take a bungalow.’

  ‘Oh, my God, Ina.’ Was it usual for women to take homosexuals so seriously, he wondered. Ingham had always thought they considered queers nothing at all. Zeros. ‘I’ve explained to you, I don’t want to move, because I’m working.’

  ‘I think the bungalows have a bad association for you. Is that true?’ Her voice was gentle.

  ‘Honey—darling—I’ve never seen you like this. You’re as bad as OWL! You know me—but you don’t seem to understand me at all any more.—You didn’t make a single comment when I was trying to explain how I’d felt in this country, this continent, since getting here. Granted, it isn’t of world-shaking importance.’ Ingham felt his heart going faster. He was standing with his drink.

  ‘Have you adopted the Arabian moral code, whatever that

  is?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘OWL said you told him that that Arab’s life was of no importance, because he was just a D.O.M.’

  That meant Dirty Old Man. ‘I said he was a lousy thief who a lot of people probably wanted out of the way.’ Ask. Anders, he’s eloquent on the subject, Ingham wanted to say.

  ‘Abdullah was the one who stole your jacket out of your car, you said.’

  ‘That’s true. I saw him. I just wasn’t close enough to catch him.’

  ‘You didn’t possibly throw something at him that night like a chair—or your typewriter,’ Ina said with a slight laugh.

  Her smile was amused, reassuring, though Ingham knew he should not be reassured by it. ‘No.’ Ingham sighed, as if at the end of an intolerable tension. He wanted to leave. He met her eyes. Ingham felt a distance between them, a sense of separateness. He hated it and looked away.

  ‘Was it Abdullah who took your cuff-links?’

  Ingham shook his head. ‘That was another night. I wasn’t in. I dunno who took the cuff-links.—I think I should go and let you sleep.’ He walked into the bathroom to dress.

  She did not detain him.

  When he was dressed, he sat beside her on the bed and kissed her lips. ‘Want a swim later? Around six?’

  1 don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Shall I pick you up around eight? We could go to La Goulette, the fishing village.’

  This idea pleased her, and since it was some distance away, Ingham said he would call for her at seven o’clock.

  21

  INGHAM wanted to see Adams. It was four-forty-five, and Adams was probably on the beach. Ingham drove his car the quarter-mile to the sandy lane that led to the bungalows. The bungalows were silent and still in the sunlight, as if everyone were having a prolonged siesta. Adams’s black Cadillac was parked in the usual place. Ingham put his car beside it.

  He knocked on Adams’s door. No answer. Ingham strolled on to the bungalow headquarters’ terrace and looked down at the beach. Only three or four figures were visible, and none looked like Adams. Ingham went back to Adams’s bungalow, walked to the back where it was shady, and sat down on the kitchen doorstep. Adams’s grey metal garbage pail stood a couple of feet away, empty. After a moment or two, Ingham was glad OWL hadn’t been in when he knocked, because he realized he had been a little angry. That wasn’t the way. The way was to hint, gently, that OWL shouldn’t be so prying, shouldn’t be putting ideas into Ina’s head, ideas that disturbed her. Ingham was cognizant of the fact he was lying, in taking this tack. It seemed to him that that was his business, and that no one else had a right to interfere with it. The police, of course, had a right. But the police were one thing, and Adams was another.

  Ingham had been sitting, leaning against the kitchen door, perhaps fifteen minutes, when the click of a lock told him that Adams had arrived. Ingham got up quickly, and walked—slowly now—to the front of the house. Adams would no doubt have noticed his car. The front door was shut, and Ingham knocked.

  The door opened. ‘Well, hello! Come in! I saw your car.

  Nice to see you !’ Adams had a shopping net in his hand. He was putting things away in the kitchen. He offered Ingham a drink, or iced coffee, and Ingham asked if he had a Coke. Adams had.

  ‘And how is Ina getting along?’ Adams asked. He opened a beer can.

  ‘I think all right.’ Ingham had not wanted to plunge in, but he thought, why not, so he said, ’What’ve you been telling her about the famous night of Abdullah?’

  ‘Why—what I know about it, that’s all. She was curious, asked me all kinds of questions.’

  ‘I suppose she did, if you told her you thought I wasn’t telling you the whole story. I think you’ve upset her, Francis.’ That was it, Ingham thought, knock the ball into his court for a change.

  Adams was choosing his words, but it did not take him long. ‘I told her what I think, Howard. I’ve got a right to do that, even if I may be wrong.’ OWL said it dogmatically, as if it were a piece of gospel by which he had always lived.

  ‘Yes. I don’t deny that,’ Ingham said, dropping into the squeaky leather chair. ‘But it’s too bad it upset her. Unnecessarily.’

  ‘How do you mean upset her?’

  ‘She began asking me questions. I don’t know who the Arab was that night. I never saw his face, and it seems to me only guesswork that it was Abdullah. It’s based on Abdullah’s apparent disappearance—and to be logical, one should leave open the possibility that he happened to disappear or leave town, and that somebody else hit himself or got hit and yelled—and that nobody at all was killed that night. You see what I mean.’

  OWL looked thoughtful, but unchanged. ‘Yes, but you know very well that isn’t so.’

  ‘How do I know it? You’re reasoning on circumstantial evidence and pretty thin evidence.’

  ‘Howard, you must have opened your door, at least. You must’ve looked out of a shutter. The yell woke you up. Anybody’s interested enough to wonder where a yell comes from at two in the morning. And the French people said they were sure the door that shut was yours.’

  His bungalow had been quite dose to theirs, Ingham realized. Their bungalow had been only twenty-five or thirty feet from his front door, albeit his front door had been on the other side of his bungalow from them. If the French had stayed awake a few minutes, they would have heard the hotel boys coming.

  ‘It’s no wonder your girl is a little curious, once she knows these facts. Howard —’ OWL seeme
d to be having difficulty, but Ingham let him struggle. ‘She’s a nice girl, a wonderful girl. She’s somebody important. It’s your duty to be on the square with her.’

  Ingham had a sick feeling he hadn’t experienced since adolescence, when he had looked into some religious books at home, dusty old things that must have belonged to great-grandparents. ‘Repent your sins … bare your soul to Christ …’ The questions and answers had assumed that everyone had sins, apparently even from birth, but what were they? The worst Ingham had been able to think of was masturbation, but since at the same time he had been browsing in psychology books which said it was normal and natural, what was there left? Ingham didn’t consider that what he had done that night had been a sin or a crime—if he had killed the Arab at all, which would always be not quite certain, until someone actually found the corpse.

  Ingham said, ‘I’ve told you what I know about that night. I don’t like it that Ina’s bothered by what you told her, Francis. Was it necessary? To spoil part of her pleasure in her vacation like this?’

  ‘Ah, but she knows what I mean,’ OWL said quietly. He had not sat down. ‘She’s a girl with some moral convictions, you know. Oh, I don’t like to use the word “religious”, but she has some ideas about God, honesty, conscience.’

  It was curious to think of OWL as a preacher in a pulpit now, barefoot, barelegged, John the Baptist, swinging a copper-coloured beer can. ‘I know what you mean. Yes. Ina’s talked to me about going to church of late.’ Ingham didn’t want to admit how little she had talked, and was annoyed that Ina—because OWL had no doubt encouraged her to speak on the subject—had probably told OWL much more than she had told him. ‘She has quite a cross to bear, you might say, with her crippled brother. She’s very fond of him.’

  ‘She knows the value of a clear conscience.’

  So do I, Ingham wanted to say. He was both irritated and bored.