Francis Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned / Прекрасные и обреченные. Уровень 4

“Don’t let me interrupt your walk!” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he answered in confusion. “Did I go too fast?”

“I’m cold,” she announced. “I want to go home. And you walk too fast.”

“I’m very sorry.”

Side by side they started for the Plaza. He wished he could see her face.

“Men don’t usually get so absorbed in themselves when they’re with me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s very interesting.”

“It is rather too cold to walk,” he said, briskly, to hide his annoyance.

She walked in without speaking, however, she threw him a single remark as she entered it:

“You’d better come up.”

He found himself in her room.

“Aren’t you interested in anything except yourself?”

“Not much.”

Anthony stared morosely at the fire. Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled.

He moved closer and taking her hand pulled her gently toward him until she half lay against his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he kissed her.

“Gloria,” he whispered very softly.

He had risen. She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn’t want to fall in love.

What delicious romance!

“This is all. It’s very strange and wonderful to meet you. But this wouldn’t last.”

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress,” she said

Anthony pulled her quickly to her feet and kissed her. In an instant she was free.

“Don’t!” she said quietly. “I don’t want that.”

She sat down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her.

“Why, Gloria!” He made a motion but she drew away.

“I don’t want that,” she repeated.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, a little impatiently. “Won’t you kiss me, Gloria?”

“I don’t want to.”

“A sudden change, isn’t it? Perhaps I’d better go.”

No reply. He rose and regarded her angrily, uncertainly. Again he sat down.

“Gloria, Gloria, won’t you kiss me?”

“No.” Her lips had faintly stirred.

Again he got to his feet, this time with less decision, less confidence.

“Then I’ll go.”

Silence.

“All right – I’ll go. If you’re tired of kissing me I’d better go.”

He saw her lips. She spoke, at length:

“I believe you’ve made that remark several times before.”

He saw his hat and coat on a chair. He perceived that she had not turned, not even moved. He went quickly but without dignity from the room.

For over a moment Gloria made no sound. Her glance was straight, proud, remote. Then she murmured three words:

“Good-bye, you ass!” she said.

Anthony had had the hardest blow of his life. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour. She had sent him away! Instead of seizing the girl and holding her by strength until she became passive to his desire, he had walked, defeated and powerless, from her door. And she had nearly loved him! He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life.

She was beautiful – but especially she was without mercy. He must own that strength that could send him away.

About midnight he began to realize that he was hungry. He went down into Fifty-second Street, where it was so cold that he could scarcely see. Anthony turned over toward Sixth Avenue, so absorbed in his thoughts as not to notice that several passers-by had stared at him. His overcoat was wide open.

After a while a fat waitress spoke to him.

“Order, please!”

Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up resentfully.

“Will you order or not?”

“Of course,” he protested.

“Well, I asked you three times. This isn’t a rest-room.”

He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was after two.

“Give me some bacon and eggs[20] bacon and eggs – яичница с беконом and coffee, please.”

The waitress hurried away.

God! Gloria’s kisses had been such flowers. Misery struck at him again. He had lost her. It was true – no denying it, no softening it. Anthony was in love, profoundly and truly in love.

Anthony was in love – he cried it passionately to himself. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously. Out of this developed a spark of wisdom.

“Memory is short,” he thought.

Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly be. Wasn’t it possible that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men. He winced. Other men! Two months – God! Better three weeks, two weeks…

Two weeks – that was worse than no time at all. No, two weeks was too short a time. He must give her a period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly.

He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off, finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then – silence.

In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.

Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed completely. He didn’t want to see Dick and Maury, imagining that they knew all – but when they met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre of attention. “The Demon Lover” had been accepted for immediate publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He needed no more Maury’s society. Only Gloria could give him everything and no one else ever again. So Dick’s success rejoiced him and worried him. It meant that the world was going ahead – writing and reading and publishing – and living. And he wanted the world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks – while Gloria forgot.

His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine’s company. He took her once to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him. It didn’t matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss. A kiss was one thing, anything further was quite another; a kiss was all right; the other things were “bad.”

One day he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other.

Once he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and stood near the front of the shop. Two strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl – then the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.

“How do you do?” he muttered.