Another Country (53 page)

At his touch, she seemed to spring. Her eyes came alive at once, and her pale lips tensed. And her smile was pale. She said, “Oh. I thought you’d never get here.”

He had surmounted a desperate temptation not to come at all, and had half-hoped that he would not find her there. She was so pale and seemed, in this cold, dazzling place, so helpless, that his heart turned over. He was half an hour late. He said, “Dear Cass, please forgive me, it’s hard to get anywhere in weather like this. How are you?”

“Dead.” She did not move, merely stared at the tip of her cigarette as though she were hypnotized by it. “I’ve had no sleep.” Her voice was very light and calm.

“You picked a strange place for us to meet.”

“Did I?” She looked unseeingly around; then looked at him. The blank despair in her face seemed to take notice, in the far distance, of him, and her face softened into sorrow. “I guess I did. I just thought— well, nobody’s likely to overhear us, and I— I just couldn’t think of any other place.”

He had been about to suggest that they leave, but her white face and the fact of the rain checked him. “It’s all right,” he said. He took her arm, they started aimlessly up the steps. He realized that he was terribly hungry.

“I can’t stay with you very long, because I left the kids alone. But I told Richard that I was coming out— that I was going to try to see you today.”

They reached the first of a labyrinthine series of rooms, shifting and crackling with groups of people, with bright paintings above and around them, and stretching into the far distance, like tombstones with unreadable inscriptions. The people moved in waves, like tourists in a foreign graveyard. Occasionally, a single mourner, dreaming of some vanished relationship, stood alone in adoration or revery before a massive memorial— but they mainly evinced, moving restlessly here and there, the democratic gaiety. Cass and Eric moved in some panic through this crowd, trying to find a quieter place; through fields of French impressionists and cubists and cacophonous modern masters, into a smaller room dominated by an enormous painting, executed, principally, in red, before which two students, a girl and a boy, stood holding hands.

“Was it very bad, Cass? last night?”

He asked this in a low voice as they stood before a painting in cool yellow, of a girl with a long neck, in a yellow dress, with yellow hair.

“Yes.” Her hood obscured her face; it was hot in the museum; she threw the hood back. Her hair was disheveled on the brow and trailing at the neck: she looked weary and old. “At first, it was awful because I hadn’t realized how much I’d hurt him. He can suffer, after all,” and she looked at Eric quickly, and looked away. They moved away from the yellow painting and faced another one, of a street with canals, somewhere in Europe. “And— no matter what has happened since, I
did
love him very much, he was my whole life, and he’ll always be very important to me.” She paused. “I suppose he made me feel terribly guilty. I didn’t know that would happen. I didn’t think it could— but— it did.” She paused again, her shoulders sagging with a weary and proud defeat. Then she touched his hand. “I hate to tell you that— but I must try to tell you all of it. He frightened me, too, he frightened me because I was suddenly terribly afraid of losing the children and I cannot live without them.” She moved one hand over her brow, uselessly pushing up her hair. “I didn’t
have
to tell him; he didn’t really know, he didn’t suspect you at all, of course; he thought it was Vivaldo. I told him because I thought he had a right to know, that if we were going to continue— together, we could begin again on a new basis, with everything clear between us. But I was wrong. Some things cannot
be
clear.”

The boy and girl were coming to their side of the room. Cass and Eric crossed over, to stand beneath the red painting. “Or perhaps some things
are
clear, only one won’t face those things. I don’t know…. Anyway— I didn’t think he’d threaten me, I didn’t think he’d try to frighten me. If
he
were leaving
me,
if he were being unfaithful to
me
— unfaithful, what a word!— I don’t think I’d try to hold him that way. I don’t think I’d try to punish him. After all— he doesn’t belong to me, nobody
belongs
to anybody.”

They began walking again, down a long corridor, toward the ladies. “He said these terrible things to me, he said that he would sue me for divorce and take Paul and Michael away from me. And I listened to him, it didn’t seem real. I didn’t see how he could say those things, if he’d ever loved me. And I watched him. I could see that he was just saying these things to hurt me, to hurt me because he’d been hurt— like a child. And I saw that I’d loved him like that, like a child, and now the bill for all that dreaming had come in. How can one have dreamed so long? And I thought it was real. Now I don’t know what’s real. And I felt betrayed, I felt that I’d betrayed myself, and you, and everything— of value, everything, anyway, that one aspires to become, one doesn’t want to be simply another grey, shapeless monster.” They passed the cheerful ladies and Cass looked at them with wonder and with hatred. “Oh, God. It’s a miserable world.”

He said nothing, for he did not know what to say, and they continued their frightening promenade through the icy and angular jungle. The colors on the walls blared at them— like frozen music; he had the feeling that these rooms would never cease folding in on each other, that this labyrinth was eternal. And a sorrow entered him for Cass stronger than any love he had ever felt for her. She stood as erect as a soldier, moving straight ahead, and no bigger, as they said in the South, than a minute. He wished that he could rescue her, that it was within his power to rescue her and make her life less hard. But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable— only love, and love itself mostly failed; and he had never loved her. He had used her to find out something about himself. And even this was not true. He had used her in the hope of avoiding a confrontation with himself which he had, neverthelesss, and with a vengeance, been forced to endure. He felt as far removed from Cass now, in her terrible hour, as he was physically removed from Yves. Space howled between them like a flood. And whereas, with every moment now, Yves was coming closer, defeating all that water, and, as he approached, becoming more unreal, Cass was being driven farther away, was already in the unconquerable distance where she would be wrapped about by reality, unalterable forever, as a corpse is wrapped in a shroud. Therefore, his sorrow, now that he was helpless, luxuriously stretched and reached. “You’ll never be a monster,” he said, “never. What’s happening is unspeakable, I know, but it can’t defeat you. You can’t go under, you’ve come too far.”

“I think I know what I
won’t
be. But what I’m going to become— that I don’t see at all. And I’m afraid.”

They passed not far from a weary guard, who looked blinded and dazzled, as though he had never been able to escape the light. Before them was a large and violent canvas in greens and reds and blacks, in blocks and circles, in daggerlike exclamations; it took a flying leap, as it were, from the wall, poised for the spectator’s eyeballs; and at the same time it seemed to stretch endlessly and adoringly in on itself, reaching back into an unspeakable chaos. It was aggressively and superbly uncharming and unreadable, and might have been painted by a lonely and bloodthirsty tyrant, who had been cheated of his victims. “How horrible,” Cass murmured, but she did not move; for they had this corner, except for the guard, to themselves.

“You said once,” he said, “that you wanted to grow. Isn’t that always frightening? Doesn’t it always hurt?”

It was a question he was asking himself— of course; she turned toward him with a small, grateful smile, then turned to the painting again.

“I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that growing just means learning more and more about anguish. That poison becomes your diet— you drink a little of it every day. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t stop seeing it— that’s the trouble. And it can, it can”— she passed her hand wearily over her brow again— “drive you mad.” She walked away briefly, then returned to their corner. “You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we’re what we are.” He watched her face from which the youth was now, before his eyes, departing; her girlhood, at last, was falling away from her. Yet, her face did not seem precisely faded, or, for that matter, old. It looked scoured, there was something invincibly impersonal in it. “I watched Richard this morning and I thought to myself, as I’ve thought before, how much responsibility I must take for who he is, for what he’s become.” She put the tip of her finger against her lips for a moment, and closed her eyes. “I score him, after all, for being second-rate, for not having any real passion, any real daring, any real thoughts of his own. But he never did, he hasn’t changed. I was delighted to give him
my
opinions; when I was with him,
I
had the daring and the passion. And he took them all, of course, how could he tell they weren’t his? And I was happy because I’d succeeded so brilliantly, I thought, in making him what I wanted him to be. And of course he can’t understand that it’s just that triumph which is intolerable now. I’ve made myself— less than I might have been— by leading him to water which he doesn’t know how to drink. It’s not for him. But it’s too late now.” She smiled. “He doesn’t have any real work to do, that’s his trouble, that’s the trouble with this whole unspeakable time and place. And I’m trapped. It doesn’t do any good to blame the people or the time— one is oneself all those people. We
are
the time.”

“You think that there isn’t any hope for us?”

“Hope?” The word seemed to bang from wall to wall. “Hope? No, I don’t think there’s any hope. We’re too empty here”— her eyes took in the Sunday crowd— “too empty— here.” She touched her heart. “This isn’t a country at all, it’s a collection of football players and Eagle Scouts. Cowards. We think we’re happy. We’re not. We’re doomed.” She looked at her watch. “I must get back.” She looked at him. “I only wanted to see you for a moment.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I do. Richard’s gone off, he may not be back for a couple of days. He wants to think, he says.” She sighed. “I don’t know.” She said, carefully, looking at the painting, “I imagine, for the sake of the children, he’ll decide that we should weather this, and stick together. I don’t know if I want that or not, I don’t know if I can bear it. But he won’t sue me for divorce, he hasn’t got the courage to name you as corespondent.” Each to the other’s astonishment, laughed. She looked at him again. “I can’t come to you,” she said.

There was a silence.

“No,” he said, “you can’t come to me.”

“So it’s really— though I’ll see you again— good-bye.”

“Yes,” he said. Then, “It had to come.”

“I know. I wish it hadn’t come as it
has
come, but”— she smiled— “you did something very valuable for me, Eric, just the same. I hope you’ll believe me. I hope you’ll never forget it— what I’ve said. I’ll never forget you.”

“No,” he said, and suddenly touched her arm. He felt that he was falling, falling out of the world. Cass was releasing him into chaos. He held on to her for the last time.

She looked into his face, and she said, “Don’t be frightened, Eric. It will help me not to be frightened, if you’re not. Do that for me.” She touched his face, his lips. “Be a man. It can be borne, everything can be borne.”

“Yes.” But he stared at her still. “Oh, Cass. If only I could do more.”

“You can’t,” she said, “do more than you’ve done. You’ve been my lover and now you’re my friend.” She took his hand in hers and stared down at it. “That was you you gave me for a little while. It was really you.”

They turned away from the ringing canvas, into the crowds again, and walked slowly down the stairs. Cass put up her hood; he had never taken off his cap.

“When will I see you?” he asked. “Will you call me, or what?”

“I’ll call you,” she said, “tomorrow, or the day after.” They walked to the doors and stopped. It was still raining.

They stood watching the rain. No one entered, no one left. Then a cab rolled up to the curb and stopped. Two women, wearing plastic hoods, fumbled with their umbrellas and handbags and change purses, preparing to step out of the cab.

Without a word, Eric and Cass rushed out into the rain, to the curb. The women ran heavily into the museum. Eric opened the cab door.

“Good-bye, Eric.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He held her. Her face was wet but he did not know whether it was rainwater or tears. She pulled away and got into the cab.

“I’ll be expecting your call,” he said.

“Yes. I’ll call you. Be good.”

“God bless you, Cass. So long.”

“So long.”

He closed the door on her and the cab moved away, down the long, blank, shining street.

Darkness was beginning to fall. The lights of the city would soon begin to blaze; it would not be long, now, before these lights would carry his name. An errant wind, a cold wind, ruffled the water in the gutter at Eric’s feet. Then everything was still, with a bleakness that was almost comforting.

Ida heard Vivaldo’s step and rushed to open the door for him, just as he began fumbling for his key. She threw back her head and laughed.

“You look like you narrowly escaped a lynching, dad. And where did you get that coat?” She looked him up and down, and laughed again. “Come on in, you poor, drowned rat, before the posse gets here.”

She closed the door behind him and he took off Eric’s coat and hung it in the bathroom and dried his dripping hair. “Do we have anything to eat in this house?”

“Yes. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.” He came out of the bathroom. “What did Richard have to say?”

She was in the kitchen with her back to him, digging in the cupboard beneath the sink where the pots and pans were kept. She came up with a frying pan; looked at him briefly; and this look made him feel that Richard had managed, somehow, to frighten her.