Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“You’re nice, Philip.”

“So are you, Coralyn. But you’re unhappy.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me why.”

“I will—but not now.”

“Tell me.”

“Don’t be a nuisance.”

She drew back from me, laughing, her hands still on my breast, and I saw that tears were in her eyes.

“I’ll tell you at breakfast,” she said, “and in the meantime, for God’s sake, let’s be happy!”

And we were, with such happiness, such ecstasy—perhaps the sharper for that—as can come to two people who know, every moment, beneath, around, above their happiness, the shadow of tragedy. Perhaps the sense of time, the sense of doom, played into our hands. At all events, everything conspired to make that twenty-four hours the happiest we ever knew together. It rained, and we walked in the rain all the way to the museum, where we scandalized the other visitors (who were very few) by making an absurdity of everything. Coralyn was at her best; at her best and most tomboyish and most ridiculous. The Turners reminded her of dishes on which poached eggs and strawberry jam had been successively eaten; she whinnied before the El Grecos; and the Rodin sculptures, she pretended, made her sick, reminding her of the “sort of pale underdeveloped over-involved things you see in bottles in a medical school.” She kissed me behind the model of the Parthenon, before Manet’s parrot portrait, in the presence of a mummy, and—what was worse—in the presence also of a very solemn museum attendant, who had come unexpectedly from behind the plaster horse. She declared that I had gray hair, and that she was a disgrace to me; taking my handkerchief out of my pocket, as she said so, to blow her nose.

“You’re an old fogey, Philip.”

“I know it.”

“You’re a darling, Philip.”

“Of course.”

“I think you ought to wear sideburns and a stock, and carry a gray umbrella.”

“Why not a bird-cage?”

“Or an organ and a monkey. Let me be your monkey, Philip.”

And at once she imitated, startlingly, a monkey, grinning rabidly and searching for fleas under her armpits. She was perfectly hideous; dowagers and art students stared; and I adored her, at the same time leading her quickly into another gallery.

After that we walked in the Park in the rain, admired the wet riders on their wet horses, admired the reservoir, the camels, the ducks and swans (I told her about the Italian immigrant, newly arrived, who though they were wild, and shot a brace for his supper), and proceeded down Sixth Avenue (my favorite street) to a French table d’hôte dinner. Everything was as delightful as could be. We dawdled over the bad cocktails, we dawdled again over the cognac and coffee, amused ourselves with the conversations at the adjacent tables, all the while with a feeling that we were avoiding the issue. Coralyn was gay; she told me about the wild parties she had been to, in the Village, and of the freaks she had met. Epicenes of both sexes. Professional Bohemians, careful cultivators of the attic and the coal-hole. She assured me that I wouldn’t at all like the sort of thing; I agreed with her. Once at a dance a well-known novelist had bitten her on the shoulder, just before he passed out in the middle of the floor. So-and-so, the publisher, had insisted on seeing her home—very affectionately—and had been sick in the cab. She had made a friend of a policeman, who had introduced her to a new speakeasy—a very nice one. She had gone with him there several times. And so on and so on.…

I might have guessed what was coming, of course, but I didn’t; and in consequence, as I see now, I made things all the harder for her. What she wanted was sympathy, understanding, guidance; what I gave her, unwittingly, late that night, was a rather nasty little lecture. I had had a few drinks too many, and her unshakable flippancy had ended by irritating me. I told her once again that she had no soul, no heart, would be lost; and while I did indeed say these things without anger, I nevertheless said them seriously, and said them (what was worse) between kisses. How intolerably that must have hurt her! And what a fool she must have thought me. That she took it admirably is, in the circumstances, the highest praise I could give her. She merely covered my mouth with her hand, and said, “Wait,” and then, with a curious air of abstraction and gentleness, ran her fingers through my hair, stopped the gesture as soon as it had begun, laughed, and fell asleep.

And at breakfast it all came out.

“Now,” she said, “holding up this nice red apple in the healthy morning sunlight, and preparing to bite it, I’ll tell you. I’ve been bad.”

“Bad?”

“Bad! Very bad. New Haven wouldn’t have any idea.”

“You wouldn’t kid me, would you?”

“I’ve had six affairs since I saw you last. And they’ve been a perfect scream.”

“Coralyn!”

“Oh, don’t for God’s sake look pious! Have a prune.”

“I don’t like prunes. They look so senile.”

“So do you.”

“Well, tell me about it. I don’t know whether to say I’m sorry or glad.”

“Why be either? Ain’t nature grand? I’ve had a good time.”

“No, I don’t think you have. I suppose Rivière is one of them!”

“Of course—don’t be an ass. So was the policeman. So was the novelist. So was the publisher.”

“Coralyn, you’re a damned fool.”

“Don’t I know it? But I wanted to hear you say it.”

She smiled across the small bare table at me, and as she smiled her eyes suddenly brightened with tears. Unblinking, still smiling, she let the tears fall. And without the slightest change in her voice she said:

“I’m afraid, Philip! I’m afraid. I really am.”

We talked about it all morning. She said she couldn’t understand it—it had just happened. She had been bored, lonely, wanted excitement, needed to feel that men were attracted to her, liked the attentions of men, especially literary men. As for the policeman—well, that was just a mad and slightly drunken experiment. What harm was there in it? She didn’t regret it at all.

I began to feel slightly sick about the whole thing, and found myself replying to her in arid monosyllables. Then I was ashamed. I told her frankly that all this had somewhat changed my feelings about her; she smiled, and said she was sure it had. Then, assuring her repeatedly that I had no real moral objections to what she was doing, I begged her to believe, as I believed, that such a way of living would bring her to ruin. She would become spiritually bankrupt. The whole thing would become meaningless. She wasn’t sure—she quarreled with me about the word spiritual. What was spiritual? I found, not unnaturally, that I wasn’t any too sure of its meaning myself; so I shifted to more material grounds. What of her life, viewed as a whole? Suppose she wanted, later, to marry, etc., etc., and the man she wanted to marry.…

“Yes, darling Philip, you’re so good but I know all that. That’s in the first grade, you learn it when you learn genders and conjugations.”

“So you do. But you learn other truths as well; and truth is truth.”

“And west is left and east is right, and never the twain shall meet.”

“Good Lord, Coralyn, you’re hopeless. What’s the use of talking to you?”

“None, I fear. I’ve simply got to go through with it. Ain’t it awful?”

“No—it really isn’t. Don’t, whatever you think, think that!” (This was my one feeble moment of magnanimity.) “It will come out all right. But for heaven’s sake don’t be in such a rush to seize life with both hands—! You’ll get them both burnt.”

“I burned both hands before the fire of life: let that be on my little headstone.”