The Talented Mr. Ripley

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d try to find that cologne, Dickie,” she said. “You know, the Stradivari I couldn’t find in Naples. San Remo’s bound to have it, they have so many shops with French stuff.”

  Tom could see them spending a whole day looking for it in San Remo, just as they had spent hours looking for it in Naples one Saturday.

  They took only one suitcase of Dickie’s between them, because they planned to be away only three nights and four days. Dickie was in a slightly more cheerful mood, but the awful finality was still there, the feeling that this was the last trip they would make together anywhere. To Tom, Dickie’s polite cheerfulness on the train was like the cheerfulness of a host who has loathed his guest and is afraid the guest realizes it, and who tries to make it up at the last minute. Tom had never before in his life felt like an unwelcome, boring guest. On the train, Dickie told Tom about San Remo and the week he had spent there with Freddie Miles when he first arrived in Italy. San Remo was tiny, but it had a famous name as an international shopping center, Dickie said, and people came across the French border to buy things there. It occurred to Tom that Dickie was trying to sell him on the town and might try to persuade him to stay there alone instead of coming back to Mongibello. Tom began to feel an aversion to the place before they got there.

  Then, almost as the train was sliding into the San Remo station, Dickie said, “By the way, Tom—I hate to say this to you, if you’re going to mind terribly, but I really would prefer to go to Cortina d’Ampezzo alone with Marge. I think she’d prefer it, and after all I owe something to her, a pleasant holiday at least. You don’t seem to be too enthusiastic about skiing.”

  Tom went rigid and cold, but he tried not to move a muscle. Blaming it on Marge! “All right,” he said. “Of course.” Nervously he looked at the map in his hands, looking desperately around San Remo for somewhere else to go, though Dickie was already swinging their suitcase down from the rack. “We’re not far from Nice, are we?” Tom asked.

  “No.”

  “And Cannes. I’d like to see Cannes as long as I’m this far. At least Cannes is France,” he added on a reproachful note.

  “Well, I suppose we could. You brought your passport, didn’t you?”

  Tom had brought his passport. They boarded a train for Cannes, and arrived around eleven o’clock that night.

  Tom thought it beautiful—the sweep of curving harbor extended by little lights to long thin crescent tips, the elegant yet tropical-looking main boulevard along the water with its rows of palm trees, its row of expensive hotels. France! It was more sedate than Italy, and more chic, he could feel that even in the dark. They went to a hotel on the first back street, the Gray d’Albion, which was chic enough but wouldn’t cost them their shirts, Dickie said, though Tom would gladly have paid whatever it cost at the best hotel on the ocean front. They left their suitcase at the hotel, and went to the bar of the Hotel Carlton, which Dickie said was the most fashionable bar in Cannes. As he had predicted, there were not many people in the bar, because there were not many people in Cannes at this time of year. Tom proposed a second round of drinks but Dickie declined.

  They breakfasted at a café the next morning, then strolled down to the beach. They had their swimming trunks on under their trousers. The day was cool, but not impossibly cool for swimming. They had been swimming in Mongibello on colder days. The beach was practically empty—a few isolated pairs of people, a group of men playing some kind of game up the embankment. The waves curved over and broke on the sand with a wintry violence. Now Tom saw that the group of men were doing acrobatics.

  “They must be professionals,” Tom said. “They’re all in the same yellow G-strings.”

  Tom watched with interest as a human pyramid began building, feet braced on bulging thighs, hands gripping forearms. He could hear their “Allez!” and their “Un—deux!”

  “Look!” Tom said. “There goes the top!” He stood still to watch the smallest one, a boy of about seventeen, as he was boosted to the shoulders of the center man in the three top men. He stood poised, his arms open, as if receiving applause. “Bravo!” Tom shouted.

  The boy smiled at Tom before he leapt down, lithe as a tiger.

  Tom looked at Dickie. Dickie was looking at a couple of men sitting nearby on the beach.

  “Ten thousand saw I at a glance, nodding their heads in sprightly dance,” Dickie said sourly to Tom.

  It startled Tom, then he felt that sharp thrust of shame, the same shame he had felt in Mongibello when Dickie had said, Marge thinks you are. All right, Tom thought, the acrobats were fairies. Maybe Cannes was full of fairies. So what? Tom’s fists were clenched tight in his trousers pockets. He remembered Aunt Dottie’s taunt: Sissy! He’s a sissy from the ground up. Just like his father! Dickie stood with his arms folded, looking out at the ocean. Tom deliberately kept himself from even glancing at the acrobats again, though they were certainly more amusing to watch than the ocean. “Are you going in?” Tom asked, boldly unbuttoning his shirt, though the water suddenly looked cold as hell.

  “I don’t think so,” Dickie said. “Why don’t you stay here and watch the acrobats? I’m going back.” He turned and started back before Tom could answer.

  Tom buttoned his clothes hastily, watching Dickie as he walked diagonally away, away from the acrobats, though the next stairs up to the sidewalk were twice as far as the stairs nearer the acrobats. Damn him anyway, Tom thought. Did he have to act so damned aloof and superior all the time? You’d think he’d never seen a pansy! Obvious what was the matter with Dickie, all right! Why didn’t he break down, just for once? What did he have that was so important to lose? A half-dozen taunts sprang to his mind as he ran after Dickie. Then Dickie glanced around at him coldly, with distaste, and the first taunt died in his mouth.

  They left for San Remo that afternoon, just before three o’clock, so there would not be another day to pay on the hotel bill. Dickie had proposed leaving by three, though it was Tom who paid the 3,430-franc bill, ten dollars and eight cents American, for one night. Tom also bought their railroad tickets to San Remo, though Dickie was loaded with francs. Dickie had brought his monthly remittance check from Italy and cashed it in francs, figuring that he would come out better converting the francs back into lire later, because of a sudden recent strengthening of the franc.

  Dickie said absolutely nothing on the train. Under a pretense of being sleepy, he folded his arms and closed his eyes. Tom sat opposite him, staring at his bony, arrogant, handsome face, at his hands with the green ring and the gold signet ring. It crossed Tom’s mind to steal the green ring when he left. It would be easy: Dickie took it off when he swam. Sometimes he took it off even when he showered at the house. He would do it the very last day, Tom thought. Tom stared at Dickie’s closed eyelids. A crazy emotion of hate, of affection, of impatience and frustration was swelling in him, hampering his breathing. He wanted to kill Dickie. It was not the first time he had thought of it. Before, once or twice or three times, it had been an impulse caused by anger or disappointment, an impulse that vanished immediately and left him with a feeling of shame. Now he thought about it for an entire minute, two minutes, because he was leaving Dickie anyway, and what was there to be ashamed of anymore? He had failed with Dickie, in every way. He hated Dickie, because, however he looked at what had happened, his failing had not been his own fault, not due to anything he had done, but due to Dickie’s inhuman stubbornness. And his blatant rudeness! He had offered Dickie friendship, companionship, and respect, everything he had to offer, and Dickie had replied with ingratitude and now hostility. Dickie was just shoving him out in the cold. If he killed him on this trip, Tom thought, he could simply say that some accident had happened. He could— He had just thought of something brilliant: he could become Dickie Greenleaf himself. He could do everything that Dickie did. He could go back to Mongibello first and collect Dickie’s things, tell Marge any damned story, set up an apartment in Rome or Paris, receive Dickie’s check eve
ry month and forge Dickie’s signature on it. He could step right into Dickie’s shoes. He could have Mr. Greenleaf, Sr., eating out of his hand. The danger of it, even the inevitable temporariness of it which he vaguely realized, only made him more enthusiastic. He began to think of how.

  The water. But Dickie was such a good swimmer. The cliffs. It would be easy to push Dickie off some cliff when they took a walk, but he imagined Dickie grabbing at him and pulling him off with him, and he tensed in his seat until his thighs ached and his nails cut red scallops in his thumbs. He would have to get the other ring off, too. He would have to tint his hair a little lighter. But he wouldn’t live in a place, of course, where anybody who knew Dickie lived. He had only to look enough like Dickie to be able to use his passport. Well, he did. If he—

  Dickie opened his eyes, looking right at him, and Tom relaxed, slumped into the corner with his head back and his eyes shut, as quickly as if he had passed out.

  “Tom, are you okay?” Dickie asked, shaking Tom’s knee.

  “Okay,” Tom said, smiling a little. He saw Dickie sit back with an air of irritation, and Tom knew why: because Dickie had hated giving him even that much attention. Tom smiled to himself, amused at his own quick reflex in pretending to collapse, because that had been the only way to keep Dickie from seeing what had been a very strange expression on his face.

  San Remo. Flowers. A main drag along the beach again, shops and stores and French and English and Italian tourists. Another hotel, with flowers in the balconies. Where? In one of these little streets tonight? The town would be dark and silent by one in the morning, if he could keep Dickie up that long. In the water? It was slightly cloudy, though not cold. Tom racked his brain. It would be easy in the hotel room, too, but how would he get rid of the body? The body had to disappear, absolutely. That left only the water, and the water was Dickie’s element. There were boats, rowboats and little motorboats, that people could rent down at the beach. In each motorboat, Tom noticed, was a round weight of cement attached to a line, for anchoring the boat.

  “What do you say we take a boat, Dickie?” Tom asked, trying not to sound eager, though he did, and Dickie looked at him, because he had not been eager about anything since they had arrived here.

  They were little blue-and-white and green-and-white motorboats, about ten of them, lined up at the wooden pier, and the Italian was anxious for customers because it was a chilly and rather gloomy morning. Dickie looked out at the Mediterranean, which was slightly hazy though not with a presage of rain. This was the kind of grayness that would not disappear all day, and there would be no sun. It was about ten-thirty—that lazy hour after breakfast, when the whole long Italian morning lay before them.

  “Well, all right. For an hour around the port,” Dickie said, almost immediately jumping into a boat, and Tom could see from his little smile that he had done it before, that he was looking forward to remembering, sentimentally, other mornings or some other morning here, perhaps with Freddie, or Marge. Marge’s cologne bottle bulged the pocket of Dickie’s corduroy jacket. They had bought it a few minutes ago at a store very much like an American drugstore on the main drag.

  The Italian boatkeeper started the motor with a yanked string, asking Dickie if he knew how to work it, and Dickie said yes. And there was an oar, a single oar in the bottom of the boat, Tom saw. Dickie took the tiller. They headed straight out from the town.

  “Cool!” Dickie yelled, smiling. His hair was blowing.

  Tom looked to right and left. A vertical cliff on one side, very much like Mongibello, and on the other a flattish length of land fuzzing out in the mist that hovered over the water. Offhand he couldn’t say in which direction it was better to go.

  “Do you know the land around here?” Tom shouted over the roar of the motor.

  “Nope!” Dickie said cheerfully. He was enjoying the ride.

  “Is that thing hard to steer?”

  “Not a bit! Want to try it?”

  Tom hesitated. Dickie was still steering straight out to the open sea. “No, thanks.” He looked to right and left. There was a sailboat off to the left. “Where’re you going?” Tom shouted.

  “Does it matter?” Dickie smiled.

  No, it didn’t.

  Dickie swerved suddenly to the right, so suddenly that they both had to duck and lean to keep the boat righted. A wall of white spray rose up on Tom’s left, then gradually fell to show the empty horizon. They were streaking across the empty water again, toward nothing. Dickie was trying the speed, smiling, his blue eyes smiling at the emptiness.

  “In a little boat it always feels so much faster than it is!” Dickie yelled.

  Tom nodded, letting his understanding smile speak for him. Actually, he was terrified. God only knew how deep the water was here. If something happened to the boat suddenly, there wasn’t a chance in the world that they could get back to shore, or at least that he could. But neither was there a chance that anybody could see anything that they did here. Dickie was swerving very slightly toward the right again, toward the long spit of fuzzy gray land, but he could have hit Dickie, sprung on him, or kissed him, or thrown him overboard, and nobody could have seen him at this distance. Tom was sweating, hot under his clothes, cold on his forehead. He felt afraid, but it was not of the water, it was of Dickie. He knew that he was going to do it, that he would not stop himself now, maybe couldn’t stop himself, and that he might not succeed.

  “You dare me to jump in?” Tom yelled, beginning to unbutton his jacket.

  Dickie only laughed at this proposal from him, opening his mouth wide, keeping his eyes fixed on the distance in front of the boat. Tom kept on undressing. He had his shoes and socks off. Under his trousers he wore his swimming trunks, like Dickie. “I’ll go in if you will!” Tom shouted. “Will you?” He wanted Dickie to slow down.

  “Will I? Sure!” Dickie slowed the motor abruptly. He released the tiller and took off his jacket. The boat bobbed, losing its momentum. “Come on,” Dickie said, nodding at Tom’s trousers that were still on.

  Tom glanced at the land. San Remo was a blur of chalky white and pink. He picked up the oar, as casually as if he were playing with it between his knees, and when Dickie was shoving his trousers down, Tom lifted the oar and came down with it on the top of Dickie’s head.

  “Hey!” Dickie yelled, scowling, sliding half off the wooden seat. His pale brows lifted in groggy surprise.

  Tom stood up and brought the oar down again, sharply, all his strength released like the snap of a rubber band.

  “For God’s sake!” Dickie mumbled, glowering, fierce, though the blue eyes wobbled, losing consciousness.

  Tom swung a left-handed blow with the oar against the side of Dickie’s head. The edge of the oar cut a dull gash that filled with a line of blood as Tom watched. Dickie was on the bottom of the boat, twisted, twisting. Dickie gave a groaning roar of protest that frightened Tom with its loudness and its strength. Tom hit him in the side of the neck, three times, chopping strokes with the edge of the oar, as if the oar were an ax and Dickie’s neck a tree. The boat rocked, and water splashed over his foot that was braced on the gunwale. He sliced at Dickie’s forehead, and a broad patch of blood came slowly where the oar had scraped. For an instant Tom was aware of tiring as he raised and swung, and still Dickie’s hands slid toward him on the bottom of the boat, Dickie’s long legs straightened to thrust him forward. Tom got a bayonet grip on the oar and plunged its handle into Dickie’s side. Then the prostrate body relaxed, limp and still. Tom straightened, getting his breath back painfully. He looked around him. There were no boats, nothing, except far, far away a little white spot creeping from right to left, a speeding motorboat heading for the shore.

  He stopped and yanked at Dickie’s green ring. He pocketed it. The other ring was tighter, but it came off, over the bleeding scuffed knuckle. He looked in the trousers pockets. French and Italian coins. He left them. He took a keychain with three keys. Then he picked up Dickie’s jacket and took Marge?
??s cologne package out of the pocket. Cigarettes and Dickie’s silver lighter, a pencil stub, the alligator wallet and several little cards in the inside breast pocket. Tom stuffed it all into his own corduroy jacket. Then he reached for the rope that was tumbled over the white cement weight. The end of the rope was tied to the metal ring at the prow. Tom tried to untie it. It was a hellish, water-soaked, immovable knot that must have been there for years. He banged at it with his fist. He had to have a knife.

  He looked at Dickie. Was he dead? Tom crouched in the narrowing prow of the boat watching Dickie for a sign of life. He was afraid to touch him, afraid to touch his chest or his wrist to feel a pulse. Tom turned and yanked at the rope frenziedly, until he realized that he was only making it tighter.

  His cigarette lighter. He fumbled for it in the pocket of his trousers on the bottom of the boat. He lighted it, then held a dry portion of the rope over its flame. The rope was about an inch and a half thick. It was slow, very slow, and Tom used the minutes to look all around him again. Would the Italian with the boats be able to see him at this distance? The hard gray rope refused to catch fire, only glowed and smoked a little, slowly parting, strand by strand. Tom yanked it, and his lighter went out. He lighted it again, and kept on pulling at the rope. When it parted, he looped it four times around Dickie’s bare ankles before he had time to feel afraid, and tied a huge, clumsy knot, overdoing it to make sure it would not come undone, because he was not very good at tying knots. He estimated the rope to be about thirty-five or forty feet long. He began to feel cooler, and smooth and methodical. The cement weight should be just enough to hold a body down, he thought. The body might drift a little, but it would not come up to the surface.

  Tom threw the weight over. It made a ker-plung and sank through the transparent water with a wake of bubbles, disappeared, and sank and sank until the rope drew taut on Dickie’s ankles, and by that time Tom had lifted the ankles over the side and was pulling now at an arm to lift the heaviest part, the shoulders, over the gunwale. Dickie’s limp hand was warm and clumsy. The shoulders stayed on the bottom of the boat, and when he pulled, the arm seemed to stretch like rubber, and the body not to rise at all. Tom got down on one knee and tried to heave him out over the side. It made the boat rock. He had forgotten the water. It was the only thing that scared him. He would have to get him out over the stern, he thought, because the stern was lower in the water. He pulled the limp body toward the stern, sliding the rope around the gunwale. He could tell from the buoyancy of the weight in the water that the weight had not touched bottom. Now he began with Dickie’s head and shoulders, turned Dickie’s body on its belly and pushed him out little by little. Dickie’s head was in the water, the gunwale cutting across his waist, and now the legs were in a dead weight, resisting Tom’s strength with their amazing weight, as his shoulders had done, as if they were magnetized to the boat bottom. Tom took a deep breath and heaved. Dickie went over, but Tom lost his balance and fell against the tiller. The idling motor roared suddenly.