Collected Stories, page 33
He rose, pulled out the chair next to him, and said to her gently, “Sit down, Margaret.”
“I’d rather stand.”
Jean put in, “Please, you must be tired, dear,” and got only an overbearing stare.
Quietly Louis sat down again. A bell clinked rapidly, and the launch started with a roar and swung in a speeding arc toward the cruiser.
After a few seconds its wake spread under the barge and set it to knocking hollowly on the stone. The little French boys squealed and leaped aboard. Sometime before the barge stopped pitching, Margaret abruptly sat down. “I’d like a drink.”
Wordlessly Louis signaled the waiter, and when he came, waited wordlessly for his daughter to order. He would not have risked asking her what she wanted.
She kept the waiter standing for thirty seconds and then tossed him the order without looking at him. “Martini, very dry.”
The waiter had a dark, smooth face with a prominent widow’s peak that looked and might have been the prow of a wig. Stumblingly, not knowing whether or not you said s’il vous plaît to waiters, but determined to say it anyway in penance for Margaret, Louis said in his careful school French, “If you please, two more vermouth cassis and the dinner menu.” He couldn’t tell whether the waiter was grateful or contemptuous or wore impassiveness like his apron, to keep him from being soiled.
The light was withdrawing; the paved curve of quay and fortifications and the town lost their clean outline in smoky dusk. The ships in the harbor had been prematurely lighted for fifteen minutes; now street lights popped on palely, and one after another the shops glowed. A new load of sailors pulled up to the dock, unloaded, stood in line before the money-changing booth under the eyes of the shore patrol. From a half dozen unseen streets music and talk and laughter emptied on to the dock. The new arrivals seized their handfuls of francs and took off. Their white hats were over their eyes; their walks were shore-leave swaggers.
Louis watched them half in amusement, half in distaste. The irrepressible young heading for a binge, they went past in threes and sixes, and talk poured from them. Of an almost comic variety, little ones and big ones, heavy and light, dark and fair, snake hips and fat hips, they moved with one mind and one compulsion. What are they after? he thought. What do they hope to find? The ancient, waiting town took them in as it had taken sailors from the ships of two thousand years. They would not be different from others; their money and their seed would flow in the same abundance, and the town’s ancient professions, ancient beds, ancient stones would accept these, too. The dusk that was rising from buildings and streets and thickening the air along the quay hummed faintly with the revels of antique ghosts.
Jean stirred with a forlorn attempt at comfort and relaxation. She loved coziness; the slightest intrusion of peace into their domestic circle could delude her into gratification. “This is nice,” she said. “This was a nice idea, Papa.”
He nodded, not to tempt Providence with talk. With Margaret along, conversation was too dangerous. She terrorized them; she was like a rodeo cowboy waiting at the gate, ready to burst out on any bewildered steer of opinion that showed in the arena. If you said anything, affirmed anything, denied anything, liked or disliked anything, you grew horns for her to throw you with.
But she astonished him by saying, “It’s at least got it over that phony ritziness at Monte Carlo.”
Incautious pleasure was in the look Jean threw Louis. “It has, hasn’t it?” she said. “You know, maybe we should move here, if we don’t like it there.”
“I’m willing.”
“All right, let’s! It isn’t so full of tourists, either.”
“Plenty of tourists in sailor suits,” Louis said.
“They’ll be gone. They don’t count. Let’s come tomorrow!” Her warm eyes rested on Margaret, slouching in her chair, and something sly moved the corners of her mouth. “Isn’t it cool all of a sudden?” she said. “You’ll have to grant that the Riviera has something nice about it, after all.”
“It’s all right,” Margaret said.
“Maybe it’s even as nice as Paris.”
Without moving from her slouch, Margaret abandoned docility. Louis could see it happen. “You couldn’t resist, could you?” she said. “You had to work in that I-told-you-so. Mother did know best, didn’t she? Look at the pretty ships, see the handsome sailors. Paris was only a passing fancy, after all, wasn’t it?” Like an irritated wild animal—maybe a buffalo, Louis thought, hypnotically watching her—she heaved erect to say loudly, “Paris was not a passing fancy! This place is not as good as Paris! I can put up with it, but don’t feed me that Mother-knows-best stuff!”
“Well, for the love of heaven,” Jean said, “what brought on that outburst?”
Margaret gave her a venomous look. “That was no outburst. That was a statement of fact. This place is not as good as Paris. I couldn’t be less interested in this place. I’m still going to study in Paris next year if it’s the last thing I do.” Like a truck driver on a narrow road, she crowded Jean into the ditch.
“It’s impossible to talk to you,” Jean said shakily. “It gives you pleasure to be rude and headstrong. I think you like to hurt us. As for Paris, that’s the maddest kind of foolishness.”
“Good God, please!” Louis said. The waiter came with the menus, and he ordered dinner for all of them without asking what they wanted. They could eat what they got, escalopes de veau, or whatever else. At least they could avoid argument on that.
It was all but dark now; darkness rose from the water to meet the dusk seeping down from the hills; between the two darks the harbor moved in steely glints and darts of red and green. Its sound was a companionable mutter against the quay. On the outer rim of their now dark-enclosed world the ships hung like Christmas decorations, the path that encircled the fort was a half circle of lemon-yellow globes. The mild and misty air took and diffused the light of their water-edged street; from the darker side streets he heard the tom-toms and the squeals. The very thought of all that hopped-up gaiety made him tired. He felt middle-aged and cornered.
With ironic wonder he reflected that some parents, from their children’s happy infancy to their successful maturity, had only experiences that inspired affection and pride. Some bright children had no personality problems; they actually liked school, instead of having vomiting spells at six, breaking windows at eight, stealing supplies at ten, defying the teachers at twelve. Some parents had yet to be visited by advisers and child psychologists, who talked of unused capacities and maladjustment and lack of motivation, and who snooped for conflicts in the child’s home life and advised more warmth and companionship, the creation of security.
Security! Her parents had created so much security that she could defy them and everything in the world. The very look on her mouth now told him she was coming at him like a fullback.
“How about it?” she demanded.
“How about what?”
“Paris.”
“But, Margaret darling, be sensible,” Jean said. “What would you do in Paris?”
“Study art,” Margaret said, her unblinking eyes on her father.
“Look, Maggie,” he said, “has any art teacher in any of your schools told you you had talent?”
“None of them would have known enough to recognize it.”
“But you recognize it in yourself.”
“Not recognize it, no. I never really tried to paint.”
“That’s what’s so foolish!” Jean cried. “I never heard of anything so—”
“Did I ever try anything I didn’t do?” she said, still watching Louis. Her nostrils tightened, her lips thrust out in a thin, fierce line. “Maybe I haven’t tried very many things, really. Maybe I never gave a damn. But when I set out to beat that snotty Gerhard kid on the rifle team, I did it, didn’t I? The only girl that ever made the rifle team. And when I wanted to be editor of the paper, I got to be, didn’t I, over the dead bodies of all the snobs in that journalism class?”
“Those weren’t exactly major triumphs,” he permitted himself to say, thinking that no accomplishment had ever given her pleasure. The only thing that gave her pleasure was to win out over someone she scorned. And she scorned everybody; she walked on prostrate necks. At any minute the ego that steamed inside her could boil over and scald somebody. “Determination is one thing; talent is another,” he said quietly.
“Opportunity is what I’m talking about,” she said. “Do those stupids with the beards have talent? All those phonies we saw sitting around the Flor or imitating Burl Ives in the Lapin Agile?”
“Do you want to be a stupid with a beard?”
“You know what I mean. If they’ve got a right there, I sure have. How do I know whether I’ve got talent unless I try? I’ll make talent. I can do anything I make up my mind to.”
“Maybe so, maybe so.”
“You could try back home,” Jean said. “There are art teachers at home. Paris is just not a place for a young girl alone. And you’ve still got three years more of college.”
“Oh, young girl alone!” Margaret said. “College! Good heavens! This is the twentieth century. Grow up and wipe off your chin.”
Jean jerked back and pinched her trembling lips together. “Margaret, you’re insufferably rude! I can’t even talk to you.”
“Why try, then?” Margaret said, her hard, intractable eyes fixed on Louis. She had not glanced at her mother since making her demand.
He started to slap his hand on the table, caught himself in time, and laid it down softly. She was where she had always loved best to be, backed into a corner with the dogs at her. Her spirits rose to that sort of thing. With his hand pressing the cool marble, he said, “You are insufferable. Now be quiet, before you make a scene.”
Perhaps because he said it quietly, she sagged back and indifferently shook and contemplated the olive in her glass. At a certain point she raised the glass and tossed the olive into her mouth. The waiter came with hors d’oeuvres.
The French word that covered so many things nudged itself into Louis’ mind as he watched her sulk—formidable, maybe even magnifique, if you cared for the type. Medea might have been one of these, or Clytemnestra, or Lady Macbeth—all the murderer-queens. But what was he thinking? His child.
Their eyes met, and she said, “I’m sorry, Father.”
Instantly he was touched. “Of course,” he said. “We all are. But it’s your mother you should speak to.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Margaret said.
Jean patted her hand; tears were beaded on her lashes.
So the food that had gone down the throat in ragged, insoluble lumps began to taste better. Louis ordered a bottle of Beaujolais. They remarked on the trick by which the wake of the incoming launch caught all the lights of town and ships and poured them down its rolling trough. They were pleasantly uncrowded; only half a dozen tables in the quayside cafés were occupied. The quay lay open and empty, like a stage.
Into the opening between the escalopes de veau and the salad, Louis inserted what he thought of as a simple act of justice and a chance for everybody to close off the bitterness of the recent conversation. Margaret knew she had gone too far; in her more quelled mood she could be talked to reasonably.
“You know we wouldn’t deny you anything in reason, if we thought it was good for you, Maggie. But you’ve never had the slightest interest in art. You have to admit it looks like a whim, because you were excited by Paris.”
“It’s no whim.”
“You’ve got brains and determination, maybe even talent. But you’re only eighteen. Wait till you finish college. Besides, it would cost a lot of money we don’t have.”
“I could live cheap in Paris.”
“Not any more.”
“I could work, then.”
“At what?”
“I’d find something.”
“And if you worked, when would you study art?”
“At night, or after work, or before work. There’d be some time free, for heaven’s sake.”
He shook his head. “There’s a limit to human energy.”
“Not to mine.”
On the empty stage of the quay a character appeared—a bit player, a walk-on. He came out of the muted revelry of a side street all by himself, a slim young sailor walking the exact middle of the street. His head was down, his white hat was pushed back to expose dark, clustered curls. Concentrating with a seriousness that showed in every move of his body, he came on; his legs buckled him forward, jerked him upright, wobbled him to the left, kinked him back to equilibrium, buckled him forward again. He seemed to have four-way hinges in his knees; his hands hung like things carried in paper bags. As he passed the money-changing booth, the shore patrol moved out alertly. When they took his elbows, he collapsed as if they had kicked his feet from under him. Carefully, more like nurses than police, they dragged him to the wall and propped him on a bench. He leaned and fell off, and they propped him up again.
After two minutes, three more sailors came into the lighted space, the two on the outside supporting the middle one like football players assisting a hurt team-mate off the field. They turned him over to the shore patrol, talked for half a minute, and with their hats over their eyes headed at a fast walk back where they had come from. There was still revelry in them; they were still after something. Only the two casualties and a doleful warrant officer with packages beside him and his nose in a comic book inhabited the disciplined area of the dock.
“Thank heavens, you’re not a boy and have to go into the service,” Jean said. “I should think their officers could control them better. Those boys can’t have been ashore two hours.”
“It doesn’t take long if you work at it,” Louis said.
“It’s pretty disgraceful all the same,” she said. “Do you think we ought to go before they all come back like that?”
“Oh, Mother, relax,” Margaret said. “They’re making a liberty, for heaven’s sake. They’ve probably been stuck aboard ship for two or three months. This is like in Mister Roberts. They’re free, for a change.”
“Free to make an awful spectacle of themselves. I wonder what the French think.”
“Oh, hell!” Margaret said. Her eyes burned oddly, her dark, twisted face thrust forward from the shadows where she sat.
An uncertain silence fell upon them.
At last Jean stood up. “I think I’ll hunt up a bathroom,” she said abruptly. “Margaret?”
“No,” Margaret said. Her eyes were absently fixed across the mistily lighted street. For several minutes she and her father sat in silence.
“I guess we’re your prison, aren’t we, Maggie?” Louis said at last.
Her hawklike face, handsome in the dusk, snapped around. “What?”
“Paris doesn’t really mean art; it means freedom. Isn’t that it?”
“Maybe,” she said. “It’s meant that for a lot of people.”
“Stupids with beards?”
“More than those.”
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose it has.” For a while there seemed nothing to say. In spite of her hostility, this was his daughter; he loved her, she anguished him, she broke his heart. He wanted to help her. Finally he said, “Your mother would be heartbroken to think the home she’s tried to make for you has been a prison.”
Margaret made a deprecatory motion with her hand.
“I could sympathize more with your wish for liberty if I knew what you expected liberty to do for you.”
“How do I know till I try?”
“I’m surprised that it’s Paris,” he said. “Paris is such a stereotype. I shouldn’t have thought you’d be taken in by it.”
“Stereotype or not,” she said.
“Lord, Lord,” he said wearily. “Well, we’ll see. Your mother will take a good deal of convincing.”
So, to his astonishment, he had given in, weakly and behind Jean’s back. He looked at his single-minded daughter almost with horror. Yet how could they not give in? How could they hold her? She would slip the collar or chew the leash and be gone in spite of them.
When Jean returned, they were deep in a silence that on his part was sheepish and guilty. She looked at them sharply, perhaps to see if they had been quarreling, and sat down with a sigh. No sooner had she seated herself than two new shore patrol came on to the stone-floored stage, escorting three sailors, one with a smeared blouse and a bloody nose, and all with the signs of belligerence upon them. The patient guardians of the dock accepted these, too, adding them to the casualties on the bench.
“I should think—” Jean started.
Louis, looking to see what had stopped her, saw a tanned, grinning face, a bristly white crew cut, white eyebrows, a rakish hat, a pair of square red hands knuckled on the table top.
“Hi,” the sailor said. “I mistaken, or you folks Americans?”
“Are we as obvious as all that?” Jean said, smiling up at him glassily.
“Heard you talkin’,” the sailor said. “It sounded good. Where you folks from?”
“Illinois,” Jean said. “Aurora.”
“That over by Chicago someplace?”
“Very near.”
“Well, well,” he said. “I’m from Pennsylvania myself—Wilkinsburg—practically part of Pittsburgh.”
“My,” Jean said with her glassy smile, “we’re all a long way from home.”
“You ain’t kiddin’,” the sailor said. “Been here long?”
“Two days. We’re staying at Monte Carlo.”
“Ha!” He ducked his head, leaning his weight heavily on the table, and looked around at them carefully. “If I’d of had time, I’d of gone. Lots of boys did. They all want to be the guy that busts the bank at Monte Carlo.”
“They don’t have to go there,” Margaret said. “There are casinos in all these towns.” She was sitting back in the shadow of the awning, but Louis could see the proud head, the strong profile.
The sailor was giving her his full attention. “Don’t I know it,” he said. “These French crap games are brutal.”
