In Search of Love and Beauty (7 page)

“If it hadn't been Leo,” Regi said, “it would have been someone else. Well, naturally, what are you, a nun or something?” She was quite indignant on Louise's behalf.

But now Louise got really angry: “You don't think, you're not thinking, that it's nothing more than—with Leo and me—” She couldn't even bring out what she had to say and ended up with “How horrible of you.”

Regi shrugged her slender, crepe de Chine shoulders; she lighted another cigarette; she recrossed her long legs by the
side of the little marble-topped table. “Sometimes you talk like a child.”

But just now Louise could hardly talk at all; she continued to stammer, partly in anger, partly in frustration at being unable to express the height and depth of her feelings. At that moment the waiter came up with a note. It was for Louise—tears of rage rose in her eyes, she tore the note across and across and threw the pieces on the deep-pile rose carpet. How handsome she looked as she did this, how brilliant her eyes were, and her bosom heaved like an opera singer's: her gold-toothed, bald-headed inamorato across the restaurant thrilled at the sight of his own rejection.

She jerked her head in his direction: “I hope you're not mixing Leo up with one of those. And I hope you don't think there's anything vulgar going on.”

“I told you: I'm not blaming you. I never thought it was vulgar when you made your pass at Leo—well, yes, of course you did, my goodness, what else was it?” Now it was Regi who was angry, whose eyes blazed; but unlike Louise's eyes, full of fire, Regi's were of ice, glinting green: “From the very first time you saw him at my place, from that first afternoon, I could see it: what was going to happen; what you were after.”

“Lies, lies,” said Louise, shutting her eyes.

“But I'm saying: it's not your fault. How could you help it? You were ready for it. And I was happy for you; I was glad. I'm still glad,” she said, crushing her cigarette in the ashtray in a rather vicious way.

Louise gathered up her handbag. She buttoned the coat of her two-piece. She rose with a resolute air.

“But what's the matter?” Regi inquired, looking up at her. “Can't we even talk frankly with each other—I thought that's what friends are for? Oh, all right, go then, if you want to, but don't forget it's your turn for the check this week.”

Louise opened her purse; she placed money on the table
regally. And regally—tall, full-figured, crowned with a wide-brimmed hat—she walked out of the restaurant. She did not hear Regi call after her, “You can take the change from me later!” Nor was she in the least aware of the tide of interest and admiration that followed in her wake. As soon as she disappeared through the revolving door, this tide turned and swept back toward the marble table where Regi now sat alone. Regi had picked up and counted the money and put it away in her alligator bag; she called for more coffee with cream; she recrossed her legs. Men straigthened their neckties. With a click of her gold lighter, Regi lighted another cigarette and rounded her mouth to blow the first smoke ring into the air.

Forty years later, Louise and Regi still met at the Old Vienna, though not very regularly. Regi lived mostly in Florida now, and when she visited New York, she didn't always bother to call Louise. But when she did, they usually arranged to meet at the Old Vienna, and as before they occupied one of the little tables for two ranged down the center. And as before, they drew many glances—only now not because they were handsome but because, perched among the crowded tables, tall and old and odd, they were impossible to overlook. And Regi, though still retaining the bored manner she had developed for social occasions, was at the same time avidly alert to everything going on around her.

“Why do you still come here?” she asked Louise, though she herself had never suggested another meeting place. Her eyes roved around, rested on Leo's old table in the alcove: “Because of him, I suppose.”

“He's hardly here now. He's at the Academy.”

“Academy,” Regi said. “Ridiculous. Who's ever heard of such pretentiousness. . . . And I hear the girls are getting younger and younger.”

“You're looking well, Regi,” Louise said.

“Because I look after myself well.” Her eyes rested on Louise; she smoked disdainfully. Louise still wore one of those same dark suits Regi remembered from years ago, and the same big hat to go with it; only now her hair, too thin to keep pins in, straggled from underneath. Regi herself had given up on her hair and wore a tall red wig; her brand-new dress was silk and of electric blue, and her jewelry was bigger and more fantastic than ever.

“And now you've sent your granddaughter to him too. Even if she isn't your granddaughter.” Regi had never given her approval to Natasha's adoption.

“She's working in the office,” Louise said. “There's a lot of secretarial work.”

“In the first place,” Regi said, counting off on a skeletal forefinger, “she can't do secretarial work.”

“Natasha is very hardworking.” But Louise sounded neither convinced nor happy. She didn't know why Natasha had gone to stay at the Academy; she wished she hadn't. It was true, Natasha couldn't do secretarial work; Leo would get angry and yell at her whenever she bungled something, which would be often.

“In the second place—” Regi said; she was ready with another finger to count off, but then she couldn't remember what there was in second place. Her eyes began to rove around the restaurant again; when she caught a curious glance at herself, she put on the contemptuous expression with which she had always warded off a pass. “Such awful types come here now,” she said. “I wouldn't be seen out dead with any of them. And the waiters are just useless, no good.” She clawed at a passing one, pointed at her empty cup:
“If
you're not too busy, thank you, and can spare a little time for me. I'm going to the theater tonight,” she told Louise. “A musical, you know how I love them. Jerry is taking me—you remember Jerry?”

“Yes,” Louise lied. Regi always had some young man
around whom she paid as little as she could get away with, so they changed frequently.

“You do? How can you? I only met him last week . . . Oh, I suppose you're mixing him up with Chuck. Well, Mr. Chuck had his good-bye and good riddance, we've seen quite enough of that one, thank you very much. . . . Oh, by the way, he said he knew your Mark.”

“Why not? Mark knows a lot of people.”

“I wouldn't like him to know someone like Chuck; not if he were
my
grandson. . . . I have such a pain here, Louise, it shoots right up my thigh.”

“Pain,” Louise said. “Who doesn't have pain.”

“I have my checkup regularly,” Regi said with a proud sway of her wig. But next moment she looked at Louise with eyes which were quite appealing and humble: “It couldn't be anything bad because Dr. Hirschfeld gave me an absolutely clean bill. He said I was remarkable . . . But it keeps coming back.” She put out her hand to a waiter again, but he escaped her nimbly, swaying sideways with his tray. “You don't know how lucky you are, Louise. All you have is toothache.”

“And heartache,” Louise said—as a joke, trying to cheer her up.

But Regi took her seriously: “Well, now listen, the time for that sort of thing is really finished. There's a lot of it going on in Florida, but I keep myself absolutely away from it. And if you hear people talk about me with Jerry or anyone, you can take it from me, there's nothing of that sort. He's just a nice boy who helps me out sometimes. I might get him to take me to Dr. Hirschfeld again tomorrow, if this doesn't get better. . . . Oh, God, you're looking over there again. I can't stand it.”

Louise took her eyes away from Leo's table and murmured, “There's such a nice couple sitting there, do you think they're husband and wife?”

“Husband and wife. Whoever is husband and wife nowadays . . .
I'll tell you something, Louise: I'm tired. I'm tired of it all.”

“So am I,” said Louise, but in such a different tone that Regi had to put her right at once: “I mean of all that sort of nonsense. The you and Leo sort of nonsense. And while we're on the subject let me tell you something else: from now on, I don't want to hear another word about the old monster. I just don't want you to mention him in my hearing ever again. I don't even want you to
think
about him when you're with me. Is that absolutely clear? Ridiculous,” she finished off.

But once upon a time, Regi had felt differently about Leo. Louise didn't remind her—and Regi didn't want to be reminded—of the night she had found them out. It was a night when, Leo having failed to come home for almost a week, Louise did what was forbidden to her: she tried to track him down. In an uproar at her own daring, she telephoned the escape hatch. But there was no answer. She let it ring and ring; then she tried several times more. The result was always the same. There was a rushing in her ears, or was it a storm in her brain. She lay down next to Bruno asleep. The storm did not abate. She got up, tried again; at the other end the phone rang and rang in an empty room.

Then she became reckless. She telephoned Regi. It was three in the morning but Regi answered quite soon, and wide awake. “. . . Know where Leo is?” she echoed Louise's question. She put surprise into her voice but did not take much trouble to make it sound genuine. “How should I know a thing like that?” she drawled and seemed to be smiling—possibly at someone else there in the room with her.

Years and years later—two generations later—Regi told Mark about that night, and its aftermath, and how jealous his grandmother had been. Regi laughed at the recollection: “She always took everything so
seriously.
For me it was only an episode, short and not all that sweet, but for her . . . Well,”
said Regi, patting down her wig, “each one to his taste, or whatever it is they say.”

Mark listened to her with pleasure. He always liked listening to Regi and getting her view of the past. When she was in New York, he often visited her in her apartment—the same apartment where Leo had held his first classes. Although she only used it for a few weeks in the year, she kept it because by present-day prices it was what she called dirt cheap. She never allowed anyone else to stay there. When she left, she simply lowered the blinds, and when she returned, she opened them again. She still had the ultramodern furniture of the thirties, all glass and tubular metal legs; the same white wolf rugs yawned on the parquet floors. Over the marble mantel hung an expressionist portrait of Regi in the nude. “Do you really like it?” she asked Mark who always spent a long time looking at it. She felt it didn't do her justice, although she knew by now that it was worth a great deal of money. It had been painted by a German artist who later became very famous. He had been madly in love with Regi—crazy about her, she told Mark—but she hadn't had much time for him. “I don't know why you think it's good,” she pouted at the picture which showed her geometrically elongated, with green eyes spilling all over the place, and breasts like little icebergs.

“This is what I really looked like,” she said. She drew his attention to a studio portrait which showed her contemplating in profile. When he admired it, she got into a good mood and brought out her albums. There was Regi in a swimsuit, and Regi in her leopard-skin coat; and motoring in an open sports car, and off to a masquerade as a chimney sweep in tight black silk. Louise was with her in many of these early photographs, and other girls in very short skirts. There was a New Year's Eve party where everyone held a champagne glass and blinked at the light of the flash. Another time they were on the beach wearing colored swimming tubes. All the young men were dapper, with a tennis racket in one hand and
the other around a girl's waist. In some of the pictures they kissed the girls but no one was serious for their eyes were swiveled roguishly toward the camera and some of the young men winked.

“Yes, we were so romantic,” Regi said, “so romantic it isn't true.” She looked at Mark sitting next to her, turning the pages with such pleasure. “And what about you?” she said, digging her forefinger into his ribs. “Don't say you're not romantic.”

“No, I'm not saying that,” Mark smiled.

“I should hope not. You can't fool little Regi. I can always tell.”

“Tell what?”

“What, he asks. What do you think?” She massaged his thigh which he obligingly kept still beneath her old, old, speckled hand. “Yes, it sticks out a mile when a person is romantic; when that person lives for love.” She smiled into the distance but next moment she took her hand from his thigh after giving it a hard, rather spiteful little pinch; she sighed. “You should have known me at that time, what's the use now,” she said and shut her album with a snap and was in a bad humor for the rest of his visit, as though somewhere she had been cheated, shortchanged.

But she was right: Mark was of a very romantic disposition. Regi often teased him and tried to get him to confide in her about his affairs. “You can tell Regi,” she coaxed him, and afterward she boasted to Louise that he did tell her. But he didn't; he was secret as the grave.

In his younger days he had been promiscuous. He had started when he was in school, had really got into his stride in college, and then through his restless years of travel. But although in those days he had frequented bars and beaches, this was not his chosen way of life. Mark was serious in his approach: it was love he wanted, he craved, and he was ardent
and tireless in his pursuit of it. He met with many disappointments, drained cups of bitterness to their dregs, but his ideal was never dimmed. This was always embodied for him in youth and beauty—it was only there that love for him was to be found. Yes, he believed in the beauty of the soul, but it was necessary for him actually to see it embodied in physical form. In earlier days, his chosen partners had been of his own age, but once he got into his early thirties, he preferred boys who were considerably younger. He looked very young himself: he was fair, compact, quick-moving, rather short in stature—his height was his grandfather Bruno's rather than his tall willowy father's. But although he looked so boyish, the role he liked to assume was a paternal one. Perhaps because he had always had his women—Louise, Marietta, Natasha—to look after and play the father to, so that he was used to being depended on, educating, guiding.