Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

He spoke with a slight Creole accent, and didn’t say seven thirty but “seven sirty.” I didn’t know it then, but I’d caught him on his weakness when I began talking food. I said yes, went on back to the Roosevelt and had myself pressed and shaved and shined and powdered till I didn’t know myself, and showed up at his mansion on St. Charles Avenue at seven thirty sharp, for one of those dinner-coat things, with cocktails and lobsters and wine. By ten o’clock, I knew I was in, even if it was all in the French language. A girl played, and I sang the only French song I knew — “ Bonjour, Suzon ,” a thing Miss Eleanor had taught me for an encore. I went out of there with my future set.

As I walked to my car, it was one of those autumn nights they have no place in the world but Louisiana, soft, balmy, and clear, so the air has something in it that sets you nuts. I inhaled it, and as I looked up, there in a magnolia tree was the moth.

All that night it kept sweeping over me, the memory of what Hannah had said, that what had tripped me wasn’t only the breaks I’d got. It was something else, the romantic in me, that had kicked the beans into the fire twice, once in Baltimore when I’d thrown up the hotel and everything else for a girl that hadn’t even taken the ribbons off her hair yet, and again in California for the memory of her. And I faced it out with myself then, once more, lying awake in the Roosevelt Hotel: What was I going to do, leave that ghost to haunt me, and maybe louse me once more, or what? It was no trouble to remember what she looked like. I had dreamed about her, every few months, from the night I had left her, and always she looked the same, sunburned and blue-eyed and light-haired, and always twelve years old. I began to ask myself if I should go back to Maryland, or wherever she was, and get it over with. Either I’d still be in love with her, and maybe we could begin where we left off, or I’d be cured with one look, and that would be that. I asked myself if it was all imagination, if I was just being a fool, if I should go to sleep and forget her. But that night in the car, more than twelve years before, driving to hell and gone all over the face of the map, wasn’t my imagination, and being thrown out of Seven-Star wasn’t, either. I slept, of course, after a while, and saw Douvain the next day, and checked over my finances with him, as to whether I was in any personal need, as he wouldn’t be able to take up anything in detail until after the first of the year, which was two or three months away. It pleased him I was well enough heeled, at least for a major in the Army, as I still had quite a lot of the California money, several thousand as a matter of fact. He asked me questions about that and I told him the truth, anyhow that I’d been kicked out on “a difference of opinion about matrimony.” He laughed, as a Frenchman would. I had him solid, but somewhere in my belly I was uneasy. I left New Orleans after lunch, and for the night holed up at the Cherokee in Tallahassee. I got going early, and made the De Soto, in Savannah, in time for late lunch.

When they came in, I don’t know, but I’d got to my coffee, and the place was almost empty, when the younger one, the blonde, went out, maybe to powder, and came back again, and I felt my heart skip a beat at the graceful way she walked. Both of them were in the uniform of Navy nurses, but on her it looked like something by Adrian in Beverly, while on the other one, who was around forty, it looked like the shine on a blue serge suit. I tried to keep my eyes off their table, and did, I guess, but could see them there, talking to each other, and laughing. I poured myself another cup of coffee, and wondered if I wanted it, or was making an excuse to sit there. I wondered if I shouldn’t have a third, and watch that walk some more, and try to forget the moth. Pretty soon the older one went out. Then the younger one, the one I’d been watching, came over. “... Major, don’t you think we should speak?”

I jumped up, shook hands, and pulled out a chair. “We most certainly should, Lieutenant. Can I entice you to join me? Perhaps for a liqueur?”

“Well — could we have apricot?”

“Waiter!... Two apricot brandies. Be sure they’re Apri.”

“Apri. Did you learn that in France?”

“I was in France eight days.”

“Off agin, on agin, gone agin—”

“—Finnigan!”

We both laughed, and the waiter brought the drinks. When he had gone she said: “I bet you don’t even know it.”

“Know what?”

“Finnigan to Flannagan.”

I’d never even heard of it, except the off-agin-on-agin part. She recited it, pretty funny, a whole lot about a section boss named Finnigan “a-boilin’ down his report” about a wreck, for a superintendent named Flannagan. We sipped our drink and I kept peeping at her hair. It was the color of honey, and I wanted to touch it with my hand, like it was a powder puff. She said she’d just come from France, that she’d been in Cherbourg three months. I’d never even got to Cherbourg, and we talked about what it was like, and the gray color of the sea, with the gulls white against it. I said on the Pacific the gulls looked black, as the sun blazed away in the south, and the shadows were on the near side. She thought that was interesting. We drank out, and she pushed her glass away. I paid and we went out in the lobby. “Well, what do you feel like doing, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, my. Have we got to be doing?”

“They’ve got shows.”

“I saw a show.”

“Would you like to ride?”

“I think I would.”

We went out, got in my car, and started off. She said something about the Isle of Hope, to see the terrapin farm, and we headed for it. Next thing we knew, we were rolling up the coast, and there didn’t seem to be any terrapin farm. I started into a filling station to ask, but she said: “Oh, let’s forget the turtles. Can’t we just ride?”

“All right. You could sit closer.”

“... Oh, could I?”

“If you care to.”

She measured, with her hand, the distance between us. It was about one span. It was also about the prettiest hand I’d seen in a long while, and I took it. “... Well?”

“Let me think a little bit.”

If she had laughed, that would have been one thing. If she had said: “Want to think about it,” that would have been something else, meaning something but not much. When she said: “Let me think a little bit,” it meant she was really thinking, and I felt a prickle go over me. I let go her hand, and we drove quite a while. Once she said something about not going too far, and I asked her if she was stationed in Savannah. She said no, in Miami, but she was visiting the other nurse, at her home. I said I’d have her back in plenty of time. I nearly hit a cow, which is a feature they’ve got all over Dixie. We rolled through some more scrub woods, the same scrub woods, as I’ve said, that starts in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and ends at Sabine, Texas. After a while it began getting dark, and we were twenty or thirty miles from Charleston. “... How about having dinner with me?”

“In Charleston?”

“It’s not good, like Savannah, but it’ll do.”

“I’d like to. I’ve never been there.”

“I’m living there, and I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.”

With that she moved over. I put my hand down and she put hers in it.

We ate in a place near the old market, pretty gruesome after New Orleans and Savannah, but we managed to get a meal. She talked about the Civil War, and I told her about the Star of the West and Sumter and the rest of it, anyway a little bit. Then she said she had it in her mind that Poe had been here, and said he’d always been a favorite of hers. I said he’d been a soldier at Moultrie, and as a matter of fact laid The Gold Bug on Sullivan’s Island. She got pretty excited and talked about the cryptogram and how wonderful she had thought it was, when she was young, the solution of it. I said we could drive over there. She asked if we had time, and I said we could still get to Savannah before it got too late, as we’d make better time at night. “Unless we hit cows.”