Short Stories: Five Decades (90 page)

In the hills, there was the flat sound of the mortars again. Constance wished they’d stop. “You don’t look thirty,” she said to Pritchard.

“I’ve led a simple and salutary life. Here,” he said. They were in front of one of the smaller hotels, and he put the skis in the rack and jammed the poles into the snow beside them. “Let’s go in here and get a simple and salutary cup of tea.”

“Well,” said Constance, “I really—”

“Make the letter two pages shorter tonight, and more intense.” He took her elbow gently, barely touching it, as he guided her toward the door. “And polish your hair some other night.”

They went into the bar and sat down at a heavy, carefully carved wood table. There were no other skiers in the bar—just some village men sitting under the chamois antlers on the wall, quietly playing cards on felt cloths and drinking coffee out of small stemmed glasses.

“I told you,” Pritchard said, taking off his scarf. “This country is being overrun by the Swiss.”

The waitress came over, and Pritchard ordered, in German.

“What did you ask for?” Constance asked, because she could tell it wasn’t only tea.

“Tea and lemon and black rum,” said Pritchard.

“Do you think I ought to have rum?” she asked doubtfully.

“Everybody in the whole world should have rum,” he said. “It will keep you from committing suicide in the twilight.”

“You speak German, don’t you?”

“I speak all the dead languages of Europe,” he said. “German, French, Italian, and English. I was carefully educated for a world of interchangeable currency.” He sat back, rubbing the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other, to warm them. His head was leaning against the wood-panelled wall and he was smiling at her and she couldn’t tell whether she was uncomfortable or not. “Let me hear you say ‘Hi-ho, Silver.’”

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“Isn’t that what people say in America? I want to perfect my accent for the next invasion,” he said.

“They stopped that,” she said, thinking, My, he’s a jumpy boy, I wonder what happened to him to make him that way. “They don’t say it any more. It’s out of date.”

“All the best things go out of date so quickly in your country,” he said regretfully. “Observe the Swiss.” He gestured with his head toward where the men were playing. “That game has been going on since 1910,” he said. “Living among the Swiss is so placid. It’s like living alongside a lake. Many people can’t stand it, of course. You remember that joke about the Swiss in that film about Vienna?”

“No,” Constance said. “What film?” This is the first time, she thought, I’ve ever called a movie a film. I must be careful.

“One of the characters says, ‘The Swiss haven’t had a war in a hundred and fifty years and what have they produced? The cuckoo clock.’ I don’t know.” Pritchard shrugged. “Maybe it’s better to live in a country that invents the cuckoo clock than one that invents radar. Time is nothing serious to a cuckoo clock. A little toy that makes a silly, artificial sound every half hour. For people who invent radar, time is ominous, because it’s the difference between the altitude of a plane and the location of the battery that’s going to bring it down. It’s an invention for people who are suspicious and are thinking of ambush. Here’s your tea. As you see, I’m making a serious effort to amuse you, because I’ve been watching you for five days and you give the impression of a girl who cries herself to sleep several times a week.”

“How much of this stuff do I put in?” Constance asked, confused by the flood of talk, holding up the glass of rum, and carefully making sure not to look at Pritchard.

“Half,” he said. “You have to have something in reserve for the second cup.”

“It smells good,” Constance said, sniffing the fragrance that rose from the cup after she had measured out half the glass of rum and squeezed the lemon into it.

“Perhaps”—Pritchard prepared his own cup—“perhaps I’d better talk only on impersonal subjects.”

“Perhaps that would be better,” Constance said.

“The chap who receives all those letters,” Pritchard said. “Why isn’t he here?”

Constance hesitated for a moment. “He works,” she said.

“Oh. That vice.” He sipped his tea, then put down his cup and rubbed his nose with his handkerchief. “Hot tea does that to you, too?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“You said impersonal.”

“So. The marriage is arranged.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No. But you would have said no if it wasn’t.”

Constance chuckled. “All right,” she said. “Arranged. Anyway, approximately arranged.”

“When?”

“When the three months’re up,” she said, without thinking.

“Is that a law in New York?” Pritchard asked. “That you have to wait three months? Or is it a private family taboo?”

Constance hesitated. Suddenly, she felt that she hadn’t really talked to anyone in a long time. She had ordered meals and asked directions in railroad stations and said good morning to the people in shops, but everything else had been loneliness and silence, no less painful because she had imposed it on herself. Why not, she thought, selfishly and gratefully. Why not talk about it, for once?

“It’s my father,” she said, twisting her cup. “It’s his idea. He’s against it. He said wait three months and see. He thinks I’ll forget Mark in three months in Europe.”

“America,” Pritchard said. “The only place left where people can afford to act in an old-fashioned manner. What’s the matter with Mark? Is he a fright?”

“He’s beautiful,” Constance said. “Melancholy and beautiful.”

Pritchard nodded, as though noting all this down. “No money, though,” he said.

“Enough,” said Constance. “At least, he has a good job.”

“What’s the matter with him, then?”

“My father thinks he’s too old for me,” Constance said. “He’s forty.”

“A grave complaint,” Pritchard said. “Is that why he’s melancholy?”

Constance smiled. “No. He was born that way. He’s a thoughtful man.”

“Do you only like forty-year-old men?” Pritchard asked.

“I only like Mark,” said Constance. “Although it’s true I never got along with the young men I knew. They—they’re cruel. They make me feel shy—and angry with myself. When I go out with one of them, I come home feeling crooked.”

“Crooked?” Pritchard looked puzzled.

“Yes. I feel I haven’t behaved like me. I’ve behaved the way I think the other girls they’ve gone out with have behaved. Coquettish, cynical, amorous. Is this too complicated?”

“No.”

“I hate the opinions other people have of me,” Constance said, almost forgetting the young man at the table with her, and talking bitterly, and for herself. “I hate being used just for celebrations, when people come into town from college or from the Army. Somebody for parties, somebody to maul on the way home in the taxi. And my father’s opinion of me.” She was getting it out for the first time. “I used to think we were good friends, that he thought I was a responsible, grown-up human being. Then when I told him I wanted to marry Mark, I found out it was all a fraud. What he really thinks of me is that I’m a child. And a child is a form of idiot. My mother left him when I was ten and we’ve been very close since then, but we weren’t as close as I thought we were. He was just playing a game with me. Flattering me. When the first real issue came up, the whole thing collapsed. He wouldn’t let me have my own opinion of me at all. That’s why I finally said all right to the three months. To prove it to him once and for all.” She looked suddenly, distrustfully, at Pritchard, to see whether he was smiling. “Are you being amused at me?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I’m thinking of all the people I’ve known who’ve had different opinions of me than I’ve had of myself. What a frightening idea.” He looked at her speculatively, but it was hard for her to tell how serious he was. “And what’s your opinion of yourself?”

“It’s not completely formed yet,” she said slowly. “I know what I want it to be. I want to be responsible and I don’t want to be a child and I don’t want to be cruel—and I want to move in a good direction.” She shrugged, embarrassed now. “That’s pretty lame, isn’t it?”

“Lame,” Pritchard said, “but admirable.”

“Oh, I’m not admirable yet,” she said. “Maybe in ten years. I haven’t sorted myself out completely yet.” She laughed nervously. “Isn’t it nice,” she said, “you’re going away in a few days and I’ll never see you again, so I can talk like this to you.”

“Yes,” he said. “Very nice.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone for so long. Maybe it’s the rum.”

Pritchard smiled. “Ready for your second cup?”

“Yes, thank you.” She watched him pour the tea and was surprised to notice that his hand shook. Perhaps, she thought, he’s one of those young men who came out of the war drinking a bottle of whisky a day.

“So,” he said. “Tomorrow we go up to the top of the mountain.”

She was grateful to him for realizing that she didn’t want to talk about herself any more and switching the conversation without saying anything about it.

“How will you do it—with your ankle?” she asked.

“I’ll get the doctor to put a shot of Novocain in it,” he said. “And for a few hours my ankle will feel immortal.”

“All right,” she said, watching him pour his own tea, watching his hand shake. “In the morning?”

“I don’t ski in the morning,” he said. He added the rum to his tea and sniffed it appreciatively.

“What do you do in the morning?”

“I recover, and write poetry.”

“Oh.” She looked at him doubtfully. “Should I know your name?”

“No,” he said. “I always tear it up the next morning.”

She laughed, a little uncertainly, because the only other people she had ever known who wrote poetry had been fifteen-year-old boys in prep school. “My,” she said, “you’re a queer man.”

“Queer?” He raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t that mean something a little obscene in America? Boys with boys, I mean.”

“Only sometimes,” Constance said, embarrassed. “Not now. What sort of poetry do you write?”

“Lyric, elegiac, and athletic,” he said. “In praise of youth, death, and anarchy. Very good for tearing. Shall we have dinner together tonight?”

“Why?” she asked, unsettled by the way he jumped from one subject to another.

“That’s a question that no European woman would ever ask,” he said.

“I told the hotel that I was going to have dinner up in my room.”

“I have great influence at the hotel,” he said. “I think I may be able to prevent them from taking the tray up.”

“Besides,” Constance said, “what about the lady you’ve been having dinner with all week—the French lady?”

“Good.” He smiled. “You’ve been watching me, too.”

“There’re only fifteen tables in the whole dining room,” Constance said uncomfortably. “You can’t help …” The French lady was at least thirty, with a short, fluffed haircut and a senselessly narrow waist. She wore black slacks and sweaters and very tight, shiny belts, and she and Pritchard always seemed to be laughing a great deal together over private jokes in the corner in which they sat every night. Whenever Constance was in the room with the French lady, she felt young and clumsy.

“The French lady is a good friend,” Pritchard said, “but Anglo-Saxons are not
nuancé
enough for her, she says. The French are patriots down to the last bedsheet. Besides, her husband is arriving tomorrow.”

“I think I’d really rather stick to my plan,” Constance said formally. She stood up. “Are we ready to go?”

He looked at her quietly for a moment. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Sometimes it’s impossible to keep from saying that.”

“Please,” she said. “Please, I do have to go now.”

“Of course,” he said. He stood up and left some money on the table. “Whatever you say.”

They walked the hundred yards to their hotel in silence. It was completely dark now, and very cold, and their breath crystallized in little clouds before their mouths as they walked.

“I’ll put your skis away,” he said, at the door of the hotel.

“Thank you,” she said in a low voice.

“Good night. And write a nice letter,” he said.

“I’ll try,” she said. She turned and went into the hotel.

In her room, she took off her boots but didn’t bother changing her clothes. She lay down on her bed, without putting on the lights, and stared at the dark ceiling, thinking, Nobody ever told me the English were like that.

* * *

“Dearest,” she wrote. “Forgive me for not writing, but the weather has been glorious and for a little while I’ve just devoted myself to making turns and handling deep snow.… There’s a young man here, an Englishman,” she wrote conscientiously, “who’s been very nice, who has been good enough to act as an instructor, and even if I say it myself, I’m really getting pretty good. He was in the R.A.F. and his father went down with the Hood and his mother was killed in a bombing—”

She stopped. No, she thought, it sounds tricky. As though I’m hiding something, and putting in the poor, dead, patriotic family as artful window dressing. She crumpled the letter and threw it in the wastebasket. She took out another sheet of paper. “Dearest,” she wrote.

There was a knock on the door, and she called “
Ja
.”

The door opened and Pritchard came in. She looked up in surprise. In all the three weeks, he’d never come to her room. She stood up, embarrassed. She was in her stocking feet, and the room was littered with the debris of the afternoon’s skiing—boots standing near the window, sweaters thrown over a chair, gloves drying on the radiator, and her parka hanging near the bathroom door, with a little trickle of melting snow running down from the collar. The radio was on, and an American band was playing “Bali Ha’i” from an Armed Forces station in Germany.

Pritchard, standing in front of the open door, smiled at her. “Ah,” he said, “some corner of a foreign room that is forever Vassar.”

Constance turned the radio off. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving vaguely and conscious that her hair was not combed. “Everything’s such a mess.”

Pritchard went over to the bureau and peered at Mark’s picture, which was standing there in a leather frame. “The receiver of letters?” he asked.