Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

“But you said…” Her sudden resistance made me irrationally stubborn. “The reason you came to Italy…”

“I know what I said. I know the reason I came to Italy. It’s no longer operative. That’s a word that’s very popular in Washington these days.”

“Why is it no longer operative?”

“Because I’ve changed,” Evelyn said. “You were a stranger I was going to use. You’re not a stranger any longer and I can’t use you.”

“What am I now?”

She laughed, a little sad laugh. “I’ll tell you another time.” She stood up. “Let’s go and have a drink,” she said. “I need one.”

“Remember what you told me the first night in Washington?” Evelyn was saying. We were walking down the Via Condotti, peering idly into the windows. Since the scene in the room in the hotel, we had avoided the subject of marriage. We behaved as though the conversation had never taken place. Or almost as if it hadn’t. We were more tender with each other than before, gentler. Our lovemaking had an edge of sorrow toit.

“What did I tell you in Washington?”

“That you were a simple country boy from an enormously wealthy family.”

I nodded. “Did you believe it?”

“No.” “You were right”

She smiled. “Remember,” she said, “I’m a trained lawyer. Just what do you do? As your possible future wife I suppose I ought to know, don’t you think?”

“Worry not,” I said. “I make enough to support you.” Without reflecting on it, I kept up the pretense that I was still committed to what I had said to her. I knew it was foolish, unrealistic, but it was the easiest path to follow. At least for the moment.

“I’m not worrying about anybody supporting me,” she said. “I have money of my own, and wherever we go I can always make a living. Lawyers hardly starve in America.”

“Why America? What’s wrong with living in Europe?”

She shook her head. “Europe’s not for me. I like to come on holidays and all that, but not permanently.” She looked at me shrewdly. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go back?”

“No.”

“You’re lying to me.” She stopped walking.

“Maybe,” I admitted. A man coming out of a leather shop bumped into me and said, “Scusi.”

“Would that be a good way to start a marriage?”

“I’m not asking you any questions.”

“Ask,” she said.

“I’d rather not.”

“I have a nice small house near the bay in Sag Harbor,” she said. “My parents left it to me. I like it there. I could set up a law practice and make a living without running myself into the ground. Whatever your business is, could you handle it living there?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“If I said that the only place I would live after we got married was there, would you still want to marry me?”

“Are you saying that?”

“I am,” she said. It was the first time since she had appeared on the terrace at the hotel in Porto Ercole that the Washington tone had come into her voice. Plainly, she was going to be no man’s meek little wife. We were walking again and I was silent for twenty yards. “Are you going to answer me?”

“Not right now,” I said.

“When?”

“Tonight, in a few days, in a month …” She was making me think about America and I was angry with her for it. Angelo Quinn’s paintings back in the hotel room were having their effect on me. Ever since I had first seen them, with their harsh and melancholy statement about my native country, I had been fighting the realization that one day I would have to go back. Some people, I had found out, are born to be aliens, luxuriate in being aliens. Not I. That was one thing the paintings had proved to me. Hell, I thought, I’ll never learn another language. Not even one other language. Perhaps it had been an accident that I had gone into Bonelli’s gallery that day and perhaps it had been an accident that the paintings had been as good as they were, but paintings or no paintings, in the long run, I now knew, whether it was with Evelyn or without her, I would go back. I was sure Fabian would disapprove. I could hear his arguments in advance. “Good God, man, you’ll wind up with a bullet in your head.” But I couldn’t spend my life seeking Miles Fabian’s approval.

“I’m not saying I won’t live in America,” I said. “In your house in Sag Harbor, if you want. But, everything else being equal, if I told you that there are reasons that I don’t want to explain for my preferring to live abroad, reasons I might never tell you, would you still want to marry me?”

“I don’t like to accept people on faith,” she said. “Even you. I don’t have all that much faith.”

“Now I’m the one that’s asking the question. Would you still want to marry me?”

“I won’t answer that now.” She laughed. The laugh was harsh.

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight, in a few days, in a month…”

We walked in silence again. Crossing the street we were nearly run over by a large Mercedes, speeding to catch a light. Suddenly, I had had enough of Rome.

“By the way.” Evelyn said, “who’s Pat?”

“How do you know anything about Pat?”

“I know that you know a girl called Pat.”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” I had been taken by surprise and stalled for time. I had never mentioned Pat to Evelyn. “It’s a man’s name.”

“Not the way you say it,” Evelyn said.

“When did I say it?”

“Twice. Last night in your sleep. And the way you said it, it couldn’t be a man.”

“Oh,” I had stopped walking.

“Uh-huh. Oh.”

“It’s a girl I know. Knew,” I corrected myself.

“You sounded as if you knew her very well.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“I did.”

“Were you in love with her?” “I thought so. Some of the time.” “When was the last time you saw her?” “Three years ago.”

“But you still call out her name in your sleep.” “If you say so,” I said.

“Do you still love her?” She smiled. “Some of the time?” I waited a long time before answering. “I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t you think you’d better see her and find out?”

“Yes,” I said.

The trip back to Porto Ercole the next morning was a quiet one. Neither of us spoke much. I was busy with my own thoughts and I suppose Evelyn was busy with hers. She sat far over on her side of the car, her hands in her lap, her face composed and grave. Pat, unmentioned and thousands of miles away in snowbound Vermont, was a dark presence in the sunny Italian morning. I had told Evelyn I would go and see her. “The sooner the better,” Evelyn had said. I would have to call Fabian and tell him I was arriving in New York. By way of New England.

When we got to the Pellicano, they told me that Quadrocelli had been in looking for me the night before. I asked the girl at the desk to get him for me on the phone. “Welcome home,” he said, when the connection was made. “Did you enjoy Rome?”

“Moderately,” I said.

“You are becoming blasé.” He laughed. He did not sound like a man whose plant had recently been sabotaged. “It is a beautiful morning,” he said. “I thought today would be nice for the trip to Genuttri. The sea is gentle. Would you like to go?”

“I have to ask my friend.” Evelyn was standing beside me at the desk. “He wants to take us for a ride on his boat. Do you want to go?”

“Why not?” Evelyn said.

“We’d be delighted,” I said into the phone.

“Fine. My wife will pack us a picnic hamper. She will not accompany us. She despises boats. She has transmitted this trait to her daughters, alas.” His voice was cheerful as he described the non-admiration for life at sea of the women of his family. “I must always be on the lookout for other companionship. Do you know where the Yacht Club is in the harbor?”