Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

“Very beautiful.”

“Not beautiful enough to keep you. Everyone dies or goes away.”

Not wanting to lie or to be cruelly truthful, he had not contradicted her. He had said nothing, but had kissed her, and she had returned the kiss with all the passion which had been suppressed in her silent tears. “Tell me again that I am beautiful,” she had said.

He had done so. She had sighed and said, “All right. Let’s drive some more.”

For an hour they had driven in silence. At about noon they had grown hungry and had turned up a narrow road in hilly country, seeking a place where they could get out of the rain and eat. They had driven for perhaps another half hour before coming to an abandoned villa, the east end of which had been destroyed by artillery fire. The ground all around the villa had been badly cut up, and the buff-colored stucco walls pockmarked with machine-gun bullets. He had driven the jeep slowly around the driveway which encircled the building, past a swimming pool choked with fallen masonry. On impulse he had twisted the steering wheel suddenly and driven between two shattered pillars, across a tiled courtyard littered with rubble, under a part of the roof which projected over what must once have been an anteroom. There he had stopped, and, wondering at the marvelous convenience of the ruin which allowed them to drive out of the rain, they had stepped out of the jeep. He had lifted the hood and taken part of the distributor with him, as well as the ignition key, to make sure no one would steal the car. Carrying their picnic basket and shivering a little in the dampness, they had walked through an enormous jagged hole in a charred wall and entered a huge living room. The glass in the high windows along the right-hand side of the room had been shattered, and tattered damask draperies were being blown inward, arched by the wind into the shape of wings. There had been a puddle in the middle of the polished oak floor, and everywhere there had been bits of glass and countless pieces of paper, as though an office had exploded. In one corner there had been the wreck of a grand piano, the board with the ivory keys lying separate from the rest, like the jawbone of a prehistoric beast, and the big brass-colored frame with most of the strings still taut resting on edge, like a harp. They had crossed this room and, after walking through two utterly bare rooms, had found what must once have been a small library, with a white marble fireplace at one end. The walls had been lined with bookcases, all empty now, except for many scattered leaves and detached leather bindings. There had been only two windows in that room, and, miraculously, only a few of the lower panes had been broken. Through one of the windows they had been able to see a small circular pool, in the middle of which a white marble nymph, slim waisted and full breasted but now headless, rose, holding in one upraised arm a cornucopia, out of which a fountain must once have spouted.

“Here,” he had said, putting the picnic basket down. “We’ll see if the chimney works.” Gathering some of the book leaves which lay on the floor, he had struck a match, ignited the paper, and dropped it into the fireplace. The smoke had gone straight up. “We can build a fire,” he had said.

She had stood, holding her coat collar close around her neck and looking small and lost, while he had gone to the great living room and brought back an armful of polished fragments from the splintered top of the piano. After she had helped him to gather more paper, he had built a fire carefully, setting the sharp splinters of wood on end like a wigwam. The smoky orange flames had climbed them swiftly. Suddenly the room had been full of the acrid smell of burning varnish. She had knelt by the fire and held her hands out to it, and he had noticed for the first time that her hands were the hands of a nervous child, that she had bitten her fingernails to the quick. Her hands had been surprisingly small, fragile, and finely tapered. She had glanced up at him, and upon seeing that he was looking at her hands, she had quickly doubled them into fists, so that the fingernails were hidden, and had put them into the pockets of her coat with exactly the gesture of a child caught stealing cookies. Then she had stood up, looking flustered. Impulsively he had taken her right hand out of her pocket, smoothed it in his own hands, and kissed it. She had buried her face in his shoulder, and he had felt that she was shivering.

“You’re too beautiful to worry about your hands,” he had said. “Come on, you’re cold — let’s get more wood on that fire.” He had gone to the living room and come back carrying a heavy amputated leg of the piano, the foot of which had been carved to resemble the claws of a lion clutching a round, shiny ball. This he had placed on the fire, and the flames had immediately embraced it, licking greedily at the varnish. He had returned to the living room and, grabbing one of the tattered damask draperies, had given it a hard pull and brought it down in a cloud of dust and a clatter of falling curtain rods. This he had dragged to the library and had ripped pieces from it to stuff the broken windowpanes. The remainder he had spread on the floor as a tablecloth, and she had begun to unpack the basket, placing sandwiches done up in brown paper and the bottle of wine and a cold roast chicken carefully in a row. Gradually the roaring fire had warmed the room. They had taken their overcoats off and folded them by the tablecloth to serve as pillows on which to sit.

That day she had been wearing a worn black skirt, a white blouse cut almost like a man’s shirt with an open collar, and a dark-green jacket which she had made herself, trying to copy a picture in a magazine advertisement. They had eaten greedily, wiping their hands on the damask tablecloth and passing the bottle of wine back and forth between them. When they were through, she had packed the remnants of the picnic away in the basket. Carefully lighting two cigarettes, he had handed her one, and she had sat down comfortably, edging a little toward the fire and holding her hands out to the flames, this time unabashed. Outside, the rain had started coming down faster, and the rags he had stuffed in the broken windowpanes had started to drip on the floor. Far overhead a squadron of bombers had droned, going somewhere, high above the clouds. The unbroken glass in the windows had trembled. Content to sit and stare into the fire, which was already reducing the great claw of the piano leg to embers, he had said nothing. Glancing at his wrist watch, he had seen it was not yet two o’clock. That meant they would have eighteen more hours until eight o’clock the next morning, when he would have to check in with the sergeant at the transportation desk. Eighteen more hours, he had thought gratefully, and slowly had calculated: the big sweep hand on his watch would have to tick off one thousand and eighty minutes, a marvelously long time. He had glanced at her and to his surprise had found her looking hurt and forlorn. Suddenly he had realized that she had expected him to make love to her long before this, and that she was afraid that he had grown tired of her, or that she had displeased him in some way. He had smiled at her. “Come over here,” he had said. Quickly she had gone to him and lain with her head in his lap, looking up at him, his smile mirrored on her face. He had stroked her hair and forehead softly, feeling, for the moment, oddly calm. Overhead another squadron of bombers had droned, followed by more and more, until the whole building trembled. He had glanced over his shoulder and through the rain-streaked glass had seen the headless nymph outside, holding her empty cornucopia high, silhouetted against the rain-drenched clouds. After a few moments he had looked back at Maria, lying with her head on his lap in the yellow firelight, and he had seen that to invite his affections, she had unbuttoned her jacket and opened the blouse, partly exposing her breasts and the deep valley between them. He had kissed her then, the kiss beginning almost as an act of kindness, but quickly becoming much more than that. “Oh, God, I love you,” he had said.