Renata Adler - Speedboat

Back here, the enmity began when the tenant on the third floor, an early riser, stole the Times of the tenant on the fifth. On weekdays, the third-floor tenant would acquire his paper honestly, along with his cigarettes, on the way to the school where he was a history teacher and guidance adviser to the senior class. He was a bachelor. On Saturday mornings, he would escort whoever had spent the night with him to her own place; or, if he had spent the night at her place, he would return alone. In either case, he would buy a paper on the way. On Sunday, however, and within a few months of the first occasion every single Sunday, he would steal his upstairs neighbor’s Times. The first theft had been, in a way, accidental. He had assumed, from the silence on the staircase all weekend, that the fifth-floor couple were away. He was wrong. The fifth-floor husband, having come down to the sidewalk, and found his newspaper missing, ranted all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor, where he paused for breath. I live on the fourth floor. The third-floor tenant, as he subsequently explained to me, thought this humorless of our neighbor. Some weeks, he stole the whole paper; some weeks, just the News of the Week in Review. I don’t think there is a reader of the Sunday Times in the world who does not, every Sunday, experience some anxiety that his News of the Week in Review section will be missing. The fifth-floor tenant was beside himself. It is possible that there will be murder, in the end.

She did not know the way. They had arrived for dinner in their separate cars, never having before, as it happened, met. They had drinks and dinner. When it was time to leave, the hostess, remarking that they both lived in the same neighboring town, and knowing Marge’s sense of direction to be poor, suggested that Joe lead the way back. So they drove through the night, he in his old Packard, she in her battered Ford. Along the curves of the back road, on the highway, on the dark back roads again, she maintained the distance between them perfectly. When a car passed her, and seemed about to stay behind him, she passed the car easily in her turn. Watching at intervals, for miles, through the rearview mirror, he saw her driving smoothly, keeping that steady distance; he had not needed to slow down. It turned him on.

Years ago, when we were not even the same people, years and a lot of separations ago, Aldo and I went to the particular bar in Venice where he and his friends had gone all one summer, when they were still boys, at boarding school. The bar was not crowded. Italian workingmen came in, had one quick drink, and left. There were only four bar stools. Aldo and I sat down. We ordered drinks. Aldo was certain the bartender recognized him, that he was holding back any sign of recognition until the regular customers were gone. Over our third drink, Aldo began to speak his Italian, of which he was proud then. After a time, the bartender, who turned out also to be the owner, did remember, or claimed to remember, the young Americans who had come to his bar so often, seven years ago. He called to a back room, to his two brothers, who came out and sat on the stools beside us. Aldo ordered Scotch all around. He was congratulated many times on his fluency in Italian. The brothers pronounced it incredible for one who had spent so short a time in Italy. He was, for a moment, hurt by the qualification. Then he took it to be a joke, and happily smiled. One more round of Scotch. Then, the bartender, with solemnity and in friendship, brought out the house brandy and treated us to a drink. The house brandy was greenish brown, with the texture of the filling in a many-year-old bonbon. It seemed, after all those drinks, not bad. It was also the particular house drink that Aldo remembered with such fondness. Seeing how happy the first glass seemed to make him, the brothers insisted that we drink several rounds of it.

Our pensione was extremely squalid. I have no memory of crossing Venice to return to it, although we did get there. The pensione was not on any canal. It is probable that we walked. We were the only transients. There were six permanent tenants, women, staying in the place. They were not young. They wore black. They sat, most of the time, in the dark parlor, which had stained, stuffed chairs on a floor of dirty linoleum. They discussed us. Sometimes they fell silent when we came in. Sometimes not. Often we heard them through the wall of our bedroom. I was certain, it only stood to reason, that they also heard us. Aldo said that was paranoid. If they heard us, that was their problem. He had to like the place. It was the one they had all stayed in that boarding-school summer. Or he thought it was. And if it wasn’t, it was certainly like it. Or near it, anyway. It wasn’t the sort of neighborhood you could forget. From the moment we first arrived, in any case, and gave the concierge, or proprietress, or whatever she was, our separate passports, and she hesitated, and then thought what she could charge and decided to admit us, it was clear that the six old Venetian women had a lot to talk about.

When we got back to the pensione from the bar with the house brandy, we went through the parlor to our room. We went to bed. Late that night, I woke up. Sick. Sicker than I had ever been in my life before, or have been since. There was a small sink in our room. Within a short time, I had exhausted the possibilities of this sink. The pensione had only one lavatory. Under somewhat better control, I managed to put on Aldo’s raincoat and go there, to be sick. Then, I went back to our room, tidied up, brushed my teeth at our sink, went to bed and passed out. When I woke up, just at dawn, I felt almost well. It seemed only right to check on the condition of that lavatory, though, before the other guests got up. Aldo was still asleep, I thought, but looked healthy. I found my own trench coat this time, and set out down the hall. Four of the women were in the doorways of their rooms; the other two sat in chairs they had put outside the lavatory door. They stared. They smiled. They clucked. It seemed somehow horrible. The lavatory was clean. I walked back to our room. The woman across the hallway nodded, cooed, made a cradling motion with her arms, and said, very slowly and distinctly in Italian, Perhaps he will marry you now. I smiled at her. I went into our room and shut the door.

Maybe it was a hangover. It was certainly the most wretched moment of my life. I got back into bed. Aldo moved, woke up, groaned. “I feel awful,” he said. I said I did too. The house brandy, I thought. He shook his head. He did look worrieder, sadder even, than I had ever seen him look. He said, “I don’t know whether I can tell you.” It was unlike him. For a minute, I thought he was leaving, then realized he wasn’t. “It’s only me,” I said. He said, “Well, you especially. I don’t know what you’ll think.” He asked me to look away. I shut my eyes. He coughed. He said, “I made love to you. While you were out cold.” Pause. I said, “No. I remember. I would have thought I was awake.” He said, “I don’t mean then. Later.” I didn’t say anything. He said, “Twice.” I waited. Silence. I said, “Well, I guess I missed it then.” He said I honestly didn’t have to be as nice as that about it. He clearly meant that. Miserable as I was for my own reasons, I could tell he did mean that, whatever it was. I said, “Well, I guess I don’t understand.” He said, “You don’t?” I said, “No.” He said, “Really?” I didn’t say anything. He coughed. He said, “Necrophilia.” So I was in despair because six fat women of Venice I would never see again thought I was pregnant by a man who did not want to marry me, and he was in despair because he thought he was a necrophiliac. Both despairs were genuine. It may be that we were retarded. We were younger. We were other people, anyway, in another world.