Letter from Casablanca (8 page)

T
he evenings were slow, lingering, bloodstained by magnificent sunsets. Hot, languid nights followed, punctuated by the green sob of the lighthouse on the other side of the gulf. You’d like my story to begin like this, right? You’ve always had a certain predilection for the stereotyped. Under your docile and discreet refinement—your
charme
—you’ve always hidden a veneer of bad taste which perhaps deeply belonged to you. And yet how you hated ‘bad taste”! It disgusted you. And the banal, the everyday, they were monstrous things. Well, then, I can begin my story this way. Of course I loved the villa. The evenings were slow, lingering, bloodstained by magnificent sunsets. Hot, languid nights followed, punctuated by the green sob of the lighthouse on the other side of the gulf. I was at the window. I always slept very little. You never noticed. I would get up and stand at the window behind the curtains. Sometimes around two o’clock a light breeze arose which rippled the surface of the water. It slipped above the overheated tiles of the portico and reached my face almost tepid, comforting. There was always some ship that glided into the windowpane, freighters for the most part, I think, guided by the call of the lighthouse. In the background, on the left, the
harbor teemed with lights. It seemed to be waiting. For what? Was I waiting for something? The minutes passed slowly. The breeze blew the awnings. Desire flowed in my blood. With difficulty I managed to control it. I leaned on the windowsill overlooking the sea. The coast was a promise. Its lights glittered. It was like a holiday. I repeated to myself that my story was inside me. One day I would have written it. I would have sat down, as in a dream, at the table, without even looking at the white sheet of paper that was in front of me, and the story would have gushed out like a spring of water. And then I would have written as if by magic. The words would have arranged themselves on the page as if enchanted, drawn by a magnet called inspiration. Would you expect that I had thought this way, leaning at the window? I never thought so, naturally. It never crossed my mind. I wouldn’t have written another line.

There was something else much more urgent. I murmured the beginning of a novel.
Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay. But you’ll have to be up with the lark
. The wind moved the awnings, you slept, the lighthouse sobbed, the night was peaceful, almost tropical. But I would have arrived at my lighthouse soon. I felt it, it was near. It was enough to wait for it to send me a signal of light, at night, and I would have understood. I wouldn’t have let this opportunity escape (
my only
opportunity). I wouldn’t have spent my old age regretting missing a trip to the lighthouse. And in the meantime, I realized I was already getting old. And yet I was still young, I was a “good-looking man.” When I went down to the terrace I was aware of lingering, appreciative glances from your friends. But the age that I felt did not pertain to a registry office. It was suffocating, like a curtain over one’s face. I looked at my hands leaning on the windowsill. They were long, strong, agile. And they were old. Not you. The old age that you feared was something else. You tried to avert it with creams and lotions. You were afraid of those little spots
that appear on the backs of hands. Your worst enemy was the midday sun, and when you smiled, two little menacing lines marked the corners of your mouth. You looked enviously at your guests who basked in the sun, plunged into the swimming pool, went down to the beach heedless of the saltiness. What a fool! You suffered for nothing. You were
really
young. This isn’t old age. You would have understood it then, you understand it now. You had a splendid body. I gazed at your legs, long, smooth legs, the only part of your body that you dared to expose to the sun. It was the Mediterranean midday. Gino wandered around the veranda serving Calvados, Bacardi, and Mazagrán. Someone stood up lazily. “We’re going down to the beach, Marline, we’ll wait for you down there …” You half-opened your eyelids, an imperceptible smile marked the corners of your mouth. Only I realized why I recognized those two little lines. You didn’t move. You remained in the deck chair immersed in a pool of shadow. Only your two legs glowed in the sun. The breeze moved the fringe on the big umbrella.

Of course I loved the villa! I liked the two mansards with their crowns of vertical wall tiles on the tiled roofs, the portico with the bell tower like that of a monastery, the white shutters renewed every summer. Early in the morning, when you were still asleep, the palm grove was full of seagulls. They came to spend the night there, leaving traces of coming and going on the sand. The afternoons were sultry, so Mediterranean, smelling of pine and myrtle. I was in the wicker chair under the colonnade, next to the little granite stairs invaded by creepers, waiting for Scottie to wake up. Around four o’clock she arrived barefoot, with pillow marks on her flushed face and a doll trailing by one leg.

“Do you like best to be called Scottie or Barbara?”

“Scottie.”

“But Scottie isn’t your real name.”

“Miss Bishop gave it to me. She says that you invented it.”

“I didn’t invent it.”

“Anyway, a friend of yours, the one who’s a writer. And when I grow up I’m going to be a little fool.”

“Did Miss Bishop tell you this, too?”

“Yes, because she says you can’t escape the destiny of all the ‘flappers.’ ”

“Of what?”

“Of the little girls, that is, but Miss Bishop calls them ‘flappers’ because a lady called Zelda said it, too.”

In the evening we talked about Fitzgerald, listening to Tony Bennett sing
Tender Is the Night
. To tell the truth, nobody liked the film, not even Mr. Deluxe, who really wasn’t very hard to please. But Tony Bennett had a voice “all-consuming, like the novel,” to hear him gave atmosphere, and Gino had to put on the record again who knows how many times. Inevitably I was asked for the beginning of the book. Everyone found it
delicious
that I knew the beginnings of Fitzgerald’s novels from memory—only the beginnings, which were a passion of mine. Mr. Deluxe, solemn as usual, invited those present, to be silent. I tried to be evasive, but it was impossible to refuse. The Tony Bennett record played softly. Gino had served the Bacardi. I stared at you. You knew that that beginning was dedicated to you, it was almost as if I had written it. You lit a cigarette and slipped it into the cigarette holder. That, too, was part of the scenery. You played the flapper, but you had nothing of the flapper about you, neither the mop of hair nor the rayon stockings, much less the soul. You belonged to another category, you could even be in a novel by Drieu, maybe, or by Pérez Galdós. You had a tragic, sense of life, perhaps it was your insuperable selfishness, like a condemnation. And then I began, amid the impatience that had already begun to manifest itself. Gino avoided serving in order not to disturb. Only the voice of Tony Bennett and the lapping of the Mediterranean could be heard.
On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles
and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed facade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its English clientele went north in April
… .

Inevitably Bishop went to change the record. The sickly sweet tones of Cole Porter’s songs swept over us. Bishop was crazy about him. She thought that Cole Porter suited Fitzgerald. Or else she put on Nat King Cole singing
Quizás, quizás, quizás
. Anyway, I liked King Cole’s song, too. I felt it concerned me. It caused in me a slight melancholy.
Siempre que te pregunto, que cómo dóndey quándo
. … I tried to go on. All of you looked past me at the sea and the lights of the coast.
In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alps that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows
… . But something hindered me. My voice was uncertain, I heard it. Why did it pain me to go on? Was it perhaps the evening? Was it the lights of the coast? Was it Nat King Cole? I stared at the twilight,
y asi passando el dia, y yo, desesperado
… You could at least have made a gesture of agreement. But no, you looked at me as calmly as the others, as if you didn’t know that
all that
concerned me. I go well through the night, right, Martine? I told you with my eyes, for a few nocturnal moments, and then you go to sleep and sleep, sleep, sleep. The wind blows the awnings. There are lights down there on the coast … But the day, what is your Perri during the day? He’s the character in a little game, the figurine in a story.

Enough. I had no wish to recite anymore, the others also had no wish to stay to listen to me. The game was open. That beginning was enough for openers. Now Bishop was aware of Rosemary Hoyt involved in dancing a slow,
very
sentimental
dance. I agree that she wasn’t eighteen years old any longer and in the water she wasn’t capable of Rosemary’s “sharp little crawl,” but what did that matter? It was all too mixed up. Rosemary danced with Tom Barban, who should have danced with you, but this would have happened tomorrow evening, maybe. For that evening the roles were assigned, and Mr. Deluxe was perfectly suited to the part of the adventurous, dissatisfied ex-aviator, not bad at all, moreover, maybe a little too distinguished for a legionnaire, too well-nourished. As for the other two, you didn’t need much imagination to place them. They were so irrelevant and therefore so interchangeable, the handsome Brady and his blonde. And as for you, yes, you were a splendid Nicole. You did her perfectly. You looked like Lauren Bacall, your Tom Barban said. I heard him whisper it to you. What a pain. And his clumsy attempts to hide with the edge of his jacket his erection visible under his linen pants? Intolerable. But he was Tom Barban, the legionnaire. Legionnaires are very virile, you know, dancing with a lady who looks like Lauren Bacall.

But I, who was I? I wasn’t Dick, even if I had his role—in real life, I mean. And I wasn’t Abe North either, no, in spite of my old novel. I would never have known how to write another, even if everyone pretended to think the contrary, much less would I have written the story of our painful history. I knew only the beginnings of other people’s novels from memory. I belonged to an analogous story. I was a character transmigrated from another novel, its stylization in a smaller dimension, without grandeur and without tragedy. At least my model had his own grandeur as a gangster. But my part did not foresee madness, without even a dream for which to sacrifice life, without even a lost Daisy—or worse, my Daisy was you, but you, however, were Nicole. I was a game in our game: I was your dear little Gatsby.

The night advanced with little steps. You’d have liked this sentence in my story, too, right? I’ll satisfy you: the night
advanced with little steps. In fact, the tender night advanced with little steps. Now the phonograph played Charlie Parker’s “Easy to Love.” I had bought that record. Under the sobbing horn of poor Bird there was an almost happy chatter from Stan Freeman’s piano, almost smothered chuckles, a little phrasing of happiness. I would have preferred Jelly Morton, but for Rosemary he was a bore. It was impossible to dance to Jelly Morton. Well, what to do at that hour of the tender night advancing with little steps? St. Raphaël or l’Hôtel du Cap? St. Raphaël was better. What do you do at the Cap once you’ve had the Negronis? You croak from boredom. And the handsome Brady (but what was the handsome Brady’s name in real life?) agreed to any program whatsoever as long as he could make sheep’s eyes at you. His stupid little blonde would have followed him anywhere. “
C’est cocasse
,” she chirped, “
c’est cocasse
.” It was all
cocasse
, funny. Even Deluxe’s old Benz was
cocasse
, with its beige mudguards and its inner dividing windows. It had belonged to a retired Parisian taxi driver. He boasted about having bought it so cheaply. “I’m heartbroken only because he wanted to keep the taximeter. Sometimes there are people who get fond of such stupid things! …” And he laughed with all those very white teeth. He had too many teeth: deluxe teeth. Oh, was that a cheap shot?

But who was Mr. Deluxe, a refined musicologist? Come on, with that name! I think that he, too, was a little
cocasse
, like his Benz. “I loved your novel very much for its musicality,” he told me. What a fool. “But in your next novel—because you are writing another one, aren’t you?—in your next novel have the courage to express your love of music. Don’t be afraid of quotations, cram it with names, titles, they quickly create magical fiction. Put in the names of Coltrane and Alban Berg. I know you love Coltrane and Alban Berg, and I find myself in agreement.” He spoke of loving Alban Berg. He would have liked “to have more time to discuss it,” but then he didn’t go
further than Gershwin. But how could he understand death, with that beautiful smile of his? You couldn’t understand death either, it was out of your reach for the moment. You could understand the dead, but death and the cadaver are two different things.
Death is the curve in the road: to die is only not to be seen
. Do you remember these lines? I said them one evening, but I deceived you. They weren’t by Fitzgerald, even though everyone believed they were. It was a false quotation, and inside myself I enjoyed the deception. We were on the coast, I think near Villefranche. I quoted the phrase and said: Fitzgerald,
This Side of Paradise
. Deluxe braked almost at once. He murmured something like “Sublime, sublime,” some such nonsense, and wanted us to go down to the beach. We had to take off our shoes and walk as far as the shore line holding hands, a man and a woman, a chain. It was urgent to do
something lustral
, they were his words, it was an homage to being, to being there, to the fact of being on the straight and narrow path of life. In short, to hell with the curves, this was the concept.