“Hm-m. It doesn’t sound like a true story to me. And what brought it on, I’d like to know?”
“He said—Oh, you’re not going to understand, and you’re just going to get mad.” She got up, turned her back to him, and began to unfasten her stockings.
“What brought it on?” Chester asked slowly, braced.
“He said I reminded him of Agnes. Not the way I look, but something about my personality. Build.”
“Build? Hm-m. He knows a lot about your build?—Well, I suppose he does. He dances pretty close, doesn’t he?” Chester stood up suddenly, wanting to hit something, tear something, anything, but he only flailed a fist through empty air. Colette saw it.
“Calm down, darling, please. And go to bed,” she said gently.
“I don’t want you to have another dance with him, do you understand? Not one more dance.” Chester pointed a finger at her.
She looked back at him, blank and calm. “I think that’s absurd.”
Chester saw in a flash that they could both blackmail him. Both. Colette trailing along in Rydal’s lead, Rydal having his money and his wife, too. “It is not absurd, and I have a moral right not to have to . . . not to have to watch my wife being mauled and fingered and even kissed every night by some gigolo we had the bad luck to pick up.”
“We picked up?” Her eyes flashed as she lifted her head. “And who’re you to talk about moral right? You who killed a man,” she said softly, coming towards him. “You can kill a man and think nothing of it, and you’re trying to lay down the law to me about dancing?”
Chester had never heard her talk back before, and he was so astounded he couldn’t say anything for a moment. He realized his hand with the glass was shaking. “So, he’s been talking to you—talking to you a lot, hasn’t he?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, still aggressive, frowning.
“He’s got you on a line of reasoning there that isn’t yours. He’s trying his best, isn’t he?”
“I think you’re insanely jealous. Or maybe just insane.”
“I know when you’re quoting someone else and when you’re thinking for yourself,” Chester came back.
“I don’t want to be challenged on my morals by a murderer,” Colette said. “I don’t like being married to a murderer, if you want to know the truth.”
“Don’t use that word, because you know damned well that guy’s death was an accident.”
“It’s still a death, and it’s horrible!”
“There’re more horrible things!”
“What, for instance?”
This, Chester realized, was Colette being herself, not playing dumb, or innocent, or pliable, nor using any feminine wiles to make him feel more of a man. He might as well be up against another man. No, he thought, that wasn’t true. Chester swallowed, with difficulty. “Just what’re you getting at?” he asked in a deep voice.
“I’m getting at that I don’t like taking orders from you anymore. Orders like this.”
“Are you in love with that jerk?” Chester asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” Chester felt a silent cannonball explode in him. It left him empty. “What . . . what kind of an answer’s that? Because if you are, we’re getting out of here right now, you understand? Right now. Tonight!” His voice became a loud growl.
He saw that he had frightened her. It appeased him a little.
“I am not in love with him,” she said quietly. “And if you don’t tone your voice down, we’ll get thrown out of the hotel tonight.”
He lit a cigarette and flung the match in the direction of the tray on the night table. “That’s better,” he said.
She turned as if the words made her angry all over again. “Why? I still haven’t promised you anything. I still don’t care to take orders from a—” She stopped, tears starting in her voice. Then she controlled herself. “I think he’s a nice young man. I don’t want to hear him called a this and a that that he’s not. I like him. And he likes me.” Her look at him was like a challenge.
But Chester was spent. He was suddenly tired enough to have dropped on the floor by the bed. He put on a frown, sat down heavily on the bed, and started removing his shoes. No more tonight, he thought. Tomorrow was another day. He loved Colette, and he was going to hang on to her. He was married to her. Marriage was nine points—Marriage was ten points, God damn it!
9
On Saturday morning, Rydal slept until nearly 10, and got out of bed in a hurry when he saw the time, thinking that he should have gone downstairs hours ago for the newspapers, if he meant to be worthy of his five thousand dollars. Then he smiled and rubbed the back of his neck. Chester was probably snoozing in his room down the hall, so why rush out to buy a paper that would probably say the police had not picked up any trail as yet? Rydal indulged himself in a bath and a careful shave before he went downstairs. The paper of Chania, a slim, four-sheet affair, reported what Rydal had expected, absolutely nothing. Rydal asked and was told that the Iraklion and Athens papers would be on sale that evening. Rydal walked into a café and had a cup of coffee. It was a dull town, Chania, but Rydal rather liked dull towns, because they forced one to look at things—for want of anything else to do—that one might not otherwise notice. Like the number of flowerpots on window-sills as compared with the number in Athens or in other small towns he had been in on the main land; the number of cripples on the street; the quality of building materials used in the houses; the variety or lack of variety of the foodstuffs in the market. The public market looked a bit impoverished, like the rest of the town. Perhaps he could interest Colette and Chester in exploring it today.
Rydal went back to his room to make his report on the newspapers. Colette answered the telephone. “Good morning. Nothing in the paper today—I should say this morning.”
“Oh. I’ll tell him. That’s good, isn’t it?” She sounded wide awake.
“I suppose that’s good,” Rydal said.
“Listen, uh—Chester wants to stay in for a while and I felt like taking a walk. Do you?”
She had lowered her voice, and Rydal thought Chester was probably in the bathroom just now. “I have to write a letter,” Rydal said. “But it’ll take only about twenty minutes. Shall I meet you downstairs—around eleven thirty?”
“I’ll knock on your door. Bye-bye,” she said, and quickly hung up.
Rydal shook his head, took off his overcoat, and got out the limp tablet of white paper that he carried at the bottom of his suitcase. Since yesterday when they had arrived in Chania, Rydal had had an impulse to write his brother Kennie. He thought he should seize the inspiration while it was still seizable. Tomorrow it might be gone. He had not written to his brother in months, he didn’t know how many months, but not since long before his father died. And Kennie, no doubt a bit disapproving because Rydal had not come to their father’s funeral, had not written to him.
Chania, Crete
Sat. January 13, 19—
Dear Kennie,
How goes it? I am in the oddest of places—places to be in Greece, that is. A rather uneventful Cretan port. Perhaps it does more business in the summer. I won’t be here long, however, and my address remains American Express, Athens. I have written to Martha, as she may have told you. How are you? And Lola and the kids?
I have had a strange experience recently. In fact, it is still going on. Someday I’ll tell you all about it, but I can’t now. It has to do with a fortyish American I’ve encountered, who is a dead ringer for Papa at forty (I barely remember him then, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures). This man is in all other respects Papa’s exact opposite, though. Knowing him, being with him for a time, has had the oddest effect on me. (Pardon the many odds and pardon the apparent lightness of the tone of this letter. I feel happy this morning. But it’s not the same as fee
ling flip, which I don’t about this.)
You know, I never felt Papa was really a man. Of flesh and blood. To us kids (me at least) he was a nearly godlike figure we saw at dinnertime, when we talked some other language from what we’d been talking, at least outside the house. I never saw him make a gesture of affection to Mother, though I remember you once saying to me that you had. At any rate, knowing this particular American, who must for certain reasons be nameless here, has made me somehow see Papa better, see him more really. It is very hard to explain—especially since, as I’ve implied, this man is quite far from a pillar of virtue and I’ve yet to see anything in his character (apart from generosity with money) that might be called commendable. So much the better for my purposes. I use purposes purposely. I am using this man for my own inner purposes. He is helping me to see Papa a little better, maybe to see Papa with less resentment, more humor; I don’t know, but God knows I would like to get rid of resentments. I am older now. That’s what matters, of course. By an odd coincidence, his wife, much younger and quite attractive and vivacious, reminds me of—that unhappy mistake of my youth. A psychological purge by some sort of re-enactment that I don’t even understand yet is going on in me—and I am sure it is all for the good. You were always sympathetic towards me about Agnes, old Ken, so I hope you will be the same about what I have said here in regard to Papa, and not think I am being disrespectful of his memory when I write about him here. I did not mean disrespect when I did not come home for his funeral in December, but at that time I simply could not force myself to go back for it.
Here Rydal stopped and took a breath, sorry he had got launched on the funeral business again. He put a period to the sentence and went on in a new paragraph.
I’ll be coming back to the States pretty soon, and intend to get settled in a job somewhere at once, either Boston or New York, I suppose. Meanwhile, dear brother, it’s quite obvious from this somewhat ambiguous letter that I very much needed to make contact with you again after so long a time. Take it in that spirit. Greet your family for me. Take care of yourself. God bless you.
Your brother,
Rydal
Colette’s knock came as he was sealing the envelope. He opened the door for her.
“Hi!” she said. “How do you like me in sensible shoes?”
Rydal smiled. She was wearing red flats with tassels. “American shoes?”
“Oh, gosh, no. Greek. Can’t you tell? They’re so much cheaper in Greece, shoes. I bought five pairs.” Her high voice cracked on “pair”, like the voice of a little girl with a husky throat. “Let’s take off, want to?”
“Sure.” He picked up his overcoat and his letter.
“Is that airmail? I’ve got stamps.” She put her purse down on his unmade bed, sat down, and extracted Greek stamps from a pocket of her billfold.
Rydal accepted a couple with thanks, and felt surprised again by her efficiency. What had it been last night? Matches for his cigarette. Colette had had a book of matches in her pocketbook, though she didn’t smoke. She said she always carried a book of matches. “How is Chester? Feeling all right?”
“Oh, I guess so. Slight hangover. Wait!”
“What’s the matter?” He had opened the door for her.
“Aren’t you going—” She almost closed the door, then whispered, “Remember what you said last night? You’d kiss me before I went out any door?”
He hadn’t said it just like that, he was sure. He had been joking last night. He was joking now. He kissed her on the lips. Then, smiling, they both went out. She made him feel young again, practically like fifteen again. But without the blindness, the awful vulnerability, the kind of innocence that at fifteen has stupidity for a handmaiden.
They walked to the market, drifted down aisles of shoes and boots that smelled of cattle urine, stared with detachment and wonder at hanging meat, cut in a manner that made the pieces unidentifiable. They bought ice-cream cones and wandered on, holding hands to keep from getting separated. Colette found a loose, buttonless vest with fringe at the bottom for Chester, and Rydal helped her bargain for it. They got it for thirty drachmas less than the first price the woman had asked for it.
“I don’t think people should pay the first price they ask in places like this, do you?” Colette said. “It’s silly tourists who make the prices go up everywhere.”
Rydal nodded agreement and smiled. “Do you think Chester’ll wear it?”
“Oh, at home he will. Not out. He’s very stuffy about what he wears in public.”
The ruddy-cheeked peasant woman rolled the vest carefully in a sheet of newspaper, tucked the ends in, and presented it to Colette.
“Efharisto,” Colette replied. “Thank you.”
The woman said something back to her, smiling.
“What does she say?” Colette asked Rydal.
“Oh—she’s happy to serve you, go in health, something like that,” Rydal replied.
They walked on, Colette holding on to his arm now.
“You must be awfully good at languages to have picked up Greek so well. It’s so difficult sounding. Nothing sounds like what it is, you know what I mean? French sounds like what it is, Italian, even German a little bit, but Greek!”
Rydal put his head back and laughed. How his father would have enjoyed that comment! He could see his father’s face, if he or Martha or Kennie had said that at home. His father would look from side to side, stony-faced, as if he were in acute physical distress, and then he would announce that that was the remark of an imbecile. Chester’s face superimposed itself on his father’s, and Rydal’s smile went away.
“Can you speak Italian and French, too?” she asked.
“Yes. Much better than Greek. But it’s no achievement. I had to speak them as a kid.”
“Really? Your family travelled so much?”
“Oh, no. Hardly at all. But my father made us learn languages at home. Starting about as soon as we could speak. We had to speak French for a month in the house, then Italian, then Russian, then—”
“Russian?”
“Yes. That’s a nice language. Very cozy. My father thought it was easier that way. Well, not easier, he didn’t give a hang, but he thought people who learned a language in childhood were going to know it better later on. Or something.” Rydal smiled at her attentiveness.
“Golly.”
“And if he caught any of us speaking English during a month when we were supposed to be speaking Spanish or something else, we got demerits. We had a demerit chart in the hall upstairs, where everybody could see it. Even my poor mother got on it now and then.” He gave a laugh, a sad one.
“Holy cow.”
“Or if we mixed up languages we got demerits. First half of sentence in Italian, last half in Spanish, for instance, two demerits. My brother Kennie could never think what the French for lawnmower was, but he knew it in Russian. Kennie and I used to make puns when Papa wasn’t around. Kennie’d say at night, ‘Don’t open the window tonight, Ryd, I’m a fresh-air Fiend.’” Rydal laughed.
“I don’t get it.”
“Fiend means enemy in German. If you’re a fresh air Fiend—”
“Oh, I see, I see.” She laughed. “That’s rather good.”
But she was thinking of something else already, Rydal saw, hanging on his arm and looking down as she walked in long, slow steps, like a child trying not to step on cracks. He said nothing. They were out of the market now, walking down a quiet street of two-storey houses where they had never been before. At the end of the street, not far away, a blue notch of sky opened at the top into space, into a blue dome. The air felt washed and pure, as if it had just rained, though the unpaved street was dry. A black and white cat rolled in the dust, its belly turned up to the sun. Rydal leaned over to see if Colette still had her newspaper package. It was under her other arm.
“I was just thinking,” she said, “when we go back to New York, we can’t be—Well, we aren’t now, of course. I mean we weren’t.” The wind blew her short, reddish hair over her forehead. She still looked down as she walked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in New York, Chester was Howard Cheever. That was the name on our mailbox, the name we signed the lease for the apartment under. Then we were Mr. and Mrs. Chester MacFarland because of the passports. Chester’s real name.” She looked up suddenly, straight ahead of her, and laughed. “Chester told me he got in trouble years ago in San Francisco in some used-car deal under the name Chester MacFarland. That’s why he never used it again. I guess he thought it was so long ago, or so unimportant, it wouldn’t matter if he used it for his passport.”
Rydal frowned, trying to grasp it. “Um-m. Howard Cheever wasn’t in that Greek agent’s notebook, I don’t think. Was it?”
“No-o,” Colette said, as if it were all a gay conspiracy, a game. “And was Chester glad about that! That would have meant he’d have a couple of bank accounts seized and God knows what else.”
Rydal suddenly felt a disgust for Chester. It was a momentary thing, like a twinge of nausea. He shrugged involuntarily.
“You don’t like Chester much, do you?” she asked.
He looked at her, not knowing what to say. “Do you?”
“Me? Well—” She shrugged also.
Their shrugs bound them together, Rydal felt. Then he thought he was wrong: Colette’s shrug meant, “I’ve got to like him. I’m married to him.” Rydal didn’t like that. If it meant, “I’m not sure if I like him or not,” Rydal didn’t care for that, either. A nice, intelligent girl shouldn’t like a crook. Rydal frowned at her face in profile, at her long lashes, her young nose, her full lips. Maybe she and Chester liked going to bed together. Maybe Chester was just a good meal ticket to her. Who knew?
“I like you better,” she said, still not looking at him.