Nadine Gordimer - Life Times - Stories 1952-2007

‘Do you know who this is?’ said Waldeck almost weakly. ‘It’s Carlitta.’

Eileen was entitled to a second or two in which to be taken aback, to be speechless in the face of coincidence. In that moment, however, the coincidence did not even occur to her; she simply took in, in an intense perception outside of time, the woman before her — the brown coat open to show the collar of some nondescript silk caught together with a little brooch around the prominent tendons of the thin, creased neck; the flat, taut chest; the dowdy shoes with brown, punched-leather bows coming too high on the instep of what might have been elegant feet. And the head. Oh, that was the head she had seen before, all right; that was the head that, hair so sleek it looked like a satin turban, inclined with a mixture of coquetry, invitation, amusement and disdain towards a ridiculously long cigarette holder. That hair was brown, after all, and not the Spanish black of the photographs and imagination. And the face. Well, there is a stage in a woman’s life when her face gets too thin or too fat. This face had reached that stage and become too thin. It was a prettily enough shaped face, with a drab, faded skin, as if it was exposed to but no longer joyously took colour from the sun. Towards the back of the jaw line, near the ears, the skin sagged sallowly. Under the rather thick, attractive brows the twin caves of the eyes were finely puckered and mauvish. In this faded, fading face (it was like an old painting of which you are conscious that it is being faded away by the very light by which you are enabled to look at it) the eyes had lost nothing; they shone on, greedily and tremendous, just as they had always been, in the snow, reflecting the Neckar, watching the smoke unfurl to the music of the guitar. They were round eyes with scarcely any white to them, like the beautiful eyes of Negro children, and the lashes, lower as well as upper, were black and thick. Their assertion in that face was rather awful.

The woman who Waldeck said was Carlitta took Eileen’s hand. ‘Isn’t it fantastic? We’re only up from Ohio this morning,’ she said, smiling broadly. Her teeth were small, childishly square and still good. On her neglected face the lipstick was obviously a last-minute adornment.

‘And this is Edgar,’ Waldeck was saying, ‘Edgar Hicks. Carlitta’s husband.’

The tall, sandy-haired man shook Eileen’s hand with as much flourish as a stage comedian. ‘Glad to know you,’ he said. Eileen saw that he wore hexagonal rimless glasses, and a clip across his tie spelled in pinkish synthetic gold ‘E.J.H.’

‘Carlitta Hicks—’ Waldeck put out a hand and squeezed Carlitta’s elbow. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Sure is extraordinary,’ said Mr Hicks. ‘Carlitta here and I haven’t been up to New York for more than three years.’

‘ Ach , no, darling,’ said Carlitta, frowning and smiling quickly. She used her face so much, no wonder she had worn it out. ‘Four at least. You remember, that last time was at Christmas.’ She added to Waldeck, ‘Once in a blue moon is enough for me. Our life. .’ She half lifted a worn hand, gave a little sudden intake of breath through her fine nostrils, as if to suggest that their life, whatever it was, was such that the pleasures of New York or anywhere else offered no rival enticement. She had still a slight German accent to soften the American pronunciation of her speech.

Everyone was incoherent. Waldeck kept saying excitedly, ‘I haven’t been out of South Africa since I arrived there twenty years ago. I’m in New York two days and I find Carlitta!’

There was time only to exchange the names of hotels and to promise to telephone tomorrow. Then the theatre bell interrupted. As they parted, Waldeck called back, ‘Keep Sunday lunch free. Stefan’s coming. We’ll all be together. .’

Carlitta’s mouth pursed; her eyes opened wide in a pantomime ‘Lovely’ across the crowd.

‘And yet I’m not really entirely surprised,’ Waldeck whispered to his wife in the darkening theatre. ‘It’s been happening to us in one way or another all the time. What do you think of the husband? What about Mr Edgar Hicks from Ohio?’ he added with a nudge.

In the dark, as the curtain rose, Eileen followed it with her eyes for a moment and then said, ‘I shouldn’t have known her. I don’t think I should ever have known her.’

‘But Carlitta hasn’t changed at all!’ said Waldeck.

Waldeck was on the telephone, talking to Stefan, immediately after breakfast next morning. Passing to and fro between the bedroom and the bathroom, Eileen could see him, his body hitched up on to the corner of the small desk, smiling excitedly at what must have been Stefan’s quiet incredulity. ‘But I tell you he actually is some sort of farmer in Ohio. Yes. Well, that’s what I wanted to know. I can’t really say — very tall and fairish and thin. Very American. . Well, you know what I mean — a certain type of American, then. Slow, drawling way of speaking. Shakes your hand a long time. A weekend farmer, really. He’s got some job with a firm that makes agricultural implements, in the nearby town. She said she runs pigs and chickens. Can you believe it? So is it all right about Sunday? I can imagine you are. . Ach , the same old Carlitta.’

Sunday was a clear, sharp spring day in New York, exactly the temperature and brightness of a winter day in Johannesburg. Stefan rang up to say he would call for the Brands at about eleven, so that they could drive around a little before meeting Carlitta and her husband for luncheon.

‘Will it be all right if I wear slacks?’ asked Eileen. She always wore slacks on Sundays in Johannesburg.

‘Certainly not,’ said Stefan gravely. ‘You cannot lunch in a restaurant in New York in slacks.’

Eileen put on a suit she had bought in London. She was filled with a childlike love and respect for Stefan; she would not have done the smallest thing to displease him or to prejudice his opinion of her. When he arrived to fetch the Brands he said, equally gravely, ‘You look very well in that suit,’ and led them to his car, where his wife, whom they had met in the course of the week, sat waiting.

His wife was perhaps an odd choice for Stefan, and then again perhaps she was not; she went along with the presidency, the wealth and the Fifth Avenue apartment, and left his inner balance unchanged. She was not so young as Eileen, but young, and a beauty. An American beauty, probably of Swedish or Norwegian stock. Hers was the style of blonde beauty in which the face is darker than the hair, which was not dyed but real. It was clean and shiny and almost silvery-fair, and she wore it as such women do, straight and loose. She wore black, and when she stood up you noticed that hers was the kind of tall figure that, although the shoulders are broad and the breasts full, tapers to too-narrow hips and too-thin legs. Her eyes were green and brilliant, and crinkled up, friendly, and on the wrist of one beautiful ungloved hand she wore a magnificent broad antique bracelet of emeralds and diamonds. Otherwise she was unadorned, without even a wedding ring. As she shifted along the seat of the car, a pleasant fragrance stirred from her, the sort of fragrance the expensive Fifth Avenue stores were then releasing into the foyers of their shops, to convince their customers of the arrival of the time to buy spring clothes. When she smiled and spoke, in a soft American voice without much to say, her teeth showed fresh as the milk teeth of a child.

Eileen thought how different were this woman and herself (with her large, Colonial, blue-eyed, suburban prettiness) from the sort of girls with whom Waldeck and Stefan had belonged in the world that was lost to them — girls of the twenties, restlessly independent, sensual and intellectual, citizens of the world with dramatic faces, girls such as Carlitta, inclining her dark Oriental head, had been.