Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“Wasting your sweetness on the desert air,” said Cooke. “I think it’s a mistake—you probably frightened her. I think what women like best is to have you confide in them.”

Flodden slapped the table.

“Oh, Cookie, you’re so nice and young! Ha, ha! What do you confide in them, Cookie? Come, now, tell us. Can’t you just hear him, Bill, confiding in a sort of throaty, hesitating voice, you know, with his dear face turned a little away, sadly—‘Nellie, if you only knew how unhappy I am!—but there! I mustn’t bore you by talking about myself.’”

“The foul fiend fly away with you,” growled Cooke, blushing, “and pick your pox-pit bones.”

Flodden’s remark hurt him and made him angry; he was silent; but he reflected that it was for just this sort of remark that he most cherished Flodden. His utter recklessness of other people’s feelings and, so often, the sharpness of his perceptions! Just the sort of sharpness he himself lacked. Arrows dipped in dragon’s blood. It was curious, just the same, that Flodden didn’t write any better—all his ability was on the surface. Dull, facetious little pot-boilers. The humor of the comic strips. He sipped his Amer Picon.

“You haven’t had your bat’s uvula,” said Flodden. “Waitah!” he cried, but not too loud. Then a thought struck him. “By George! I forgot to tell you, Cookie, you have an admirer—a great man admires you. Not a woman, I regret to say—no stage queen. But old man Butler, the portrait painter. I was talking with him at the Petit Pas the other night. ‘Who was the boy,’ he said, ‘in Bill’s room the other day—with the honest blue eyes? A lovely face! And of an innocence inconceivable.’ He wants to meet you again—he wants you to sit for him.… Look at him blush! By God, he is innocent.”

When they had finished their dinner they strolled down to the Battery. Flodden, swinging his stick, walked ahead, singing, as if he had forgotten them. At the water’s edge they sat, dangling their feet. They took their coats off, sat in silence watching the Staten Island ferries. Lights rippled on the water, and a faint east wind cooled their faces.

III.

Cooke liked to feel the strong draught blowing through the subway express, with its rubbery underground smell. A gale in a cellar. Escaped newspapers floated like ghosts from car to car, crashed against the doors, wrapped themselves round people’s legs, flapped, wheeled, spread themselves out flat. Bill was talking about some poet he knew and his prowess as a swimmer. Flagrant plagiarism from Byron and Swinburne. “Powerful! I never saw anything like it. He beats the waves with tremendous, imperious arms. Yodles in the water, wallows there like a monster, like a leviathan! By God, it’s wonderful to watch him. We went to Midland Beach. He absolutely subjugates the sea.… And when he comes out, hairy and immense, he runs up the sand, dances, sings, stamps, exults like a god!”

Flodden laughed.

“All the same, his poetry is rotten. Just what you’d expect, too—he wallows like a monster in a sea of spurious ecstasy—yodles a froth of evaporated cream.”

Twenty-third Street, dark, was still far from quiet. A long freight train clanked slowly, red-lighted, along Death Avenue. A street car, nearly empty, brilliantly lighted, rattled under the elevated. In the arc-lighted yard, under the mangy ailanthus tree, the detective and his wife sat, silent, watching the cat sharpen its claws against the smooth bark. “Hot night,” said Ezra D. Ramsden.

In the stifling room, Cooke dipped his pen and held it over the yellow page. Out of all this, out of all this, wasn’t it possible to catch a single thing? He took a new blank-book from the shelf and opened the fair unspotted page. Perhaps that would be better. But it was no use—all he could think of was Flodden saying “of an innocence inconceivable,” and “honest blue eyes.” De Quincey didn’t help him—neither did Pater. He was a failure. He’d give it up—he’d get a job. After meditating for a long while he undressed and went to bed, drawing over himself a single sheet. He heard the Ramsdens murmuring in the yard. “Well, I tell you, things like vegetables are cheaper there, but that’s all.” Presently he slept. He dreamed that an orange-colored moth flew heavily in through the window, and settled with wide velvet wings on the opened page of the blank-book. The orange wings covered the two pages completely. He sprang up, shut the book, and the beautiful thing was caught. When he opened the book, he found that the pages were soft orange moth-wings; and incredibly fine, indecipherable, in purple, a poem of extraordinary beauty was written there.

“Oh, Henry, darling! My smelling salts! Will you be so kind?”

There it was again—that eternal headache. How did she endure it? How did she ever endure it? Her life was one long martyrdom to headaches. Headaches and jealousy. Henry jumped up and took down the small handbag from the rack. The train swayed, and in taking an involuntary step to balance himself, he trod on Charlotte’s foot. She gave a faint scream—a faint middle-aged scream.

“Oh!” she wailed. “Henry!”

“My poor little Charlotte! My poor Charlotte! Is it very bad? There it is. Now you shut your eyes and try to take a nice little nap until we get to Paris. There’s a whole hour. Shut your eyes, dear!… That’s right!”

Charlotte took a deep breath at the green bottle, and a look of ineffable relief came over her suffering face. She relaxed in her corner, gave a little comfortable wriggle, and then, with an adoring look at Henry, allowed her quivering eyelids to close. Poor Charlotte! Poor, poor Charlotte! It would be a good thing if she could have a little sleep—otherwise the first night in Paris was sure to be too much for her. Far too exciting. And especially as she had been looking forward to it for so long. She would be sure to go to bed right after dinner—or was this one of the nights when she would go before, and have a tray sent up? Very likely. Weeeeeee—weeeeee—said the train. Absurdly small voices, these European trains had—like children, compared with American trains. American trains with their hoarse, coarse, lugubrious nocturnal moans. He tried to look out of the window, to see what they were passing, but it was too dark. A cluster of lights whisked by, very close, and a single light farther off, more slowly. Was it a tunnel they were coming to? No, a bridge. Rattle rattle rattle, a hollow nostalgic clatter, the voice of the void. A gully of some sort, or a small river. These European rivers were so absurdly small and neat. No—too dark to see a thing. All he could see was the reflection of his own face—his round spectacles, his round chin, his thin middle-aged hair parted in the middle. Funny ineffectual face he had, so young too for forty-five. Pity he kept so young-looking, while poor Charlotte was aging so fast. Too bad, too bad. That was what made her so jealous, of course—that, and the fact that he was so—that he was so—very attractive to women. Why was it that women liked him? It was a mystery. He had never understood it. Of course, he always dressed well—always. The high collar—and stand-up collars were so rare nowadays that they gave one a distinguished look—the black cord running to his glasses, the rich tie, the well-cut suit. But it was more than that. Too bad, too bad. And here was Paris! Here they were, almost at Paris! He must, he positively must, have a party, a celebration of some kind. If Charlotte, poor little Charlotte didn’t feel up to it, why then he would go out alone. After dinner he would go out. Just for a prowl, a drink or two, and to see the gay crowds. Perhaps one of those sidewalk cafés he had heard so much about. Or even the Folies Bergères. How exciting, how delightful it would be! And what a good thing he had polished up his French! It had certainly proved perfectly adequate at the douane . That official had been very polite to him—very polite. And all these signs in the train were so ridiculously easy to read! Ne pas se pencher au dehors , for instance. Even if it weren’t also given in English that would be childishly simple. Signal d’alarme , too—really, all one needed was a little intelligence, so many of the French words were exactly like the English ones. And this, of course, was the season for bock. Was it un bock or une bock? Oh, well, it didn’t matter, so long as one made oneself understood. And these Frenchmen did most of their talking with their hands anyway—conversation was a form of physical exercise. You said bock, and then drew one hand upward from the other, indicating in the air a nice tall cold glass with an amber fluid in it. The very smile with which you said it was probably enough to suggest what it was that you wanted. Said he with a bockish smile, or smiling bockily.