Listening to Billie (11 page)

Eliza and Catherine went off to Chinatown to have lunch, to celebrate.

What would it be like to be that woman? What goes on in her mind, or beneath her skin? Daria is thinking these questions as she stares at a youngish, black-wrapped, emaciated woman of indeterminate nationality—as they both stare down into an enclosed space of broken ruins. This is the Largo Argentina, in Rome, all overgrown with bright and thriving weeds, and overrun with cats: large and small, all colors, but uniformly scraggly cats, pirates, marauders; they sleep with one eye half open, one torn ear half cocked. Daria and the other woman are both watching the cats, but why? And what is she thinking and feeling, that other?

Poor: she is obviously very poor. The black clothes are rags, and both brown shoes gape open to dingy black socks, below a short space of bare raw white legs. Blond hair makes her look not Italian; her hair is the color of Daria’s sister Eliza’s hair, but otherwise, my God—how different the two. Daria imagines that she, the other, has wandered down to Italy from some other country—Poland? Austria?—maybe looking for work, a husband, a supportive relative. And nothing has worked out for her.

The woman turns to Daria and smiles, showing terrible teeth, and gestures toward the cats; she says something in her own language, which Daria partially understands; she has said, “… spaghetti.”

And Daria turns to see that a reasonably well-dressed older man, perhaps a retired civil servant, in proper brown, has gone halfway down some steps and has set out a large platter of obviously cold and old spaghetti. Which several dozen cats gobble down in half an instant. The plate now is perfectly clean, as its owner retrieves it. He is smiling to himself, as though this were a favorite moment of his day.

Ashamed of her own perfect, expensively maintained teeth, excruciatingly aware of expensive, impractical clothes, Daria smiles guardedly at the other woman. (After all, they have the cats in common.) And she thinks, I will give her all my money.

Will
becomes
must
, an absolute imperative. It has the force of a superstition, or a charm. Since she had that thought—that directive, as it were—she must obey it.

She is to meet her husband—“Smith Worthington, my husband”—for lunch in a place called the Casina Valadier. “It’s up on the Pincio; you’ll have to take a cab. Just remember the name—here, I’ll write it on a card.” On one side engraved “
SMITH
WORTHINGTON
,” on the other, tidily printed in ink, “Casina Valadier.” “And here, you might see something you want—” She is handed a sheaf of lire, crisp pale notes. “Oh, well, you might need more.” More notes. “Don’t spend it all in one place.” He laughs.

She has no idea how much money there is, no idea of the worth of all those notes, those large-denominated lire, folded inside her suede kid-lined bag. No matter; in fact, it is probably better not to know. Daria has been indulgently told for a long time that she has no head for figures: first by her astronomy professor at college, a kindly Dutchman; and later by her husband. But there are certain numbers that she remembers as secrets: for example, six million. Hitler killed six million Jews. And why does she remember this number, why think of it now, what happened when she was a small child? (This is in the middle Sixties, by which time Smith has made five million dollars and Daria has had four miscarriages; she does not think of
these facts, neither being as real to her as six million Jews, dead.) She does think, Last night he fucked me four times—“Fuck,” a secret word that no one knows she uses in her thoughts, certainly not Smith, the exhaustedly proud fucker.

Fucking: Daria senses that this is something that Smith must do; he must drive himself into her, as untouchingly and as often as possible. Often—that is very important to Smith. He counts; she has heard him mutter to himself, “Twice a night for a week, that’s pretty good for an old guy pushing thirty.”

No matter, then, the amount, the numbers of the money. The essential, the necessary thing is to give it all, and then to run away. Daria stares around at the streets that bound the small square, streets thunderous with the tearing traffic of an approaching Roman noon: heavy buses, darting urgent cars, careening delivery bicycles and roaring motorcycles. No exit. She will have to rush through the traffic, praying Roman prayers. Santa Sophia? Minerva? Agatha?

Now she moves along the railing toward the other woman—the other, the poor and unlucky. She is holding her bag in a way that feels furtive and embarrassed. And she feels embarrassed perspiration seeping under her arms, down her dark silk dress.

Up close, the woman looks older, worse. Cracked pale lips, a white flaking around her nostrils, red-rimmed eyes. Still, at a certain time she was a young woman, obviously. A blond young woman with breasts, and everything, all invisible now beneath rags. Men wanted to fuck her. How did she feel about that—that “fucking”?

With the most rapid gesture she can manage (her hands shake a little; the tight new clasp of her bag resists), Daria reaches inside the bag; trying to cover what is now in her hand (impossible, such large bills), she thrusts it toward the woman,
and says (unaccountably) in French: “
C’est pour vous. Un petit cadeau—moi—
” She turns then and begins to run, before there has been any change of expression on that other face. Any word, in whatever language.

If she is killed, run over by a hurtling Porsche, with Smith Worthington’s impressive card in her bag, and if the ragged woman is found in the area with a lot of money, the police will piece together robbery, blackmail, something terrible. This worries Daria as she runs, dodging cars; but she is too busy not getting killed, not wanting to die just now, in Rome, near noon, when she is supposed to be meeting Smith for lunch.

Her fashionable shoes are low, small-heeled, but new and tight. Having made it across the street, a miracle, Daria slows down a little, although continuing to walk rapidly: a beautiful dark American (half Greek, but that is hard to tell), a fragile girl who looks as though she knows where she is going—who does not dare to turn around.

And then suddenly before her is a huge rounded gray stone shape, recognizable as the Pantheon. They have been there, she and Smith; they have “done” it, put money in and listened from earphones to recorded history. But what Daria remembers is the cool, the dizzying rise of space up to the dome. Mainly the cool—and so she goes inside.

For the first time, it occurs to her that having done what she was in effect told to do, what she
meant
to do, she has no money. The imperative did not allow for holding back a few hundred lire, calculating cab costs. Daria is thinking of this as she watches the door, and sees other people coming in. They are tourists, like herself, or the native poor and reverent; no lost foreign woman is among them.

Daria is perfectly aware that she is supposed to be at the Casina Valadier to meet Smith Worthington in exactly twenty minutes; however, it does not seem urgent, in that ancient and soaring roundness, that cool gray.

In a certain predictable way, Smith will not mind either her lateness or her being out of money. Women
are
late, and
they spend a lot of money, and they are shy about “fucking.” All she has to do is to arrive, although late, a little breathless, with a powdered nose and smoothed hair, and no visible perspiration. A story about a jewelry shop on the Piazza Navona. A lovely cameo ring, on order. It is only the truth that would enrage him: “I was watching some cats, mangy hungry ones. I saw this woman, and I gave her—Well, what could I give her, cold spaghetti?”

The small restaurant, its terrace overlooking most of Rome, is very French: elegant and terribly expensive, even by inflated Roman standards. And excellent French food.

Smith is having his second perfect martini; Daria, just arrived, a vermouth cassis.

Her eyes are sad and gray, and Smith is remembering a magazine article he once read that contained a quiz for people who suppose themselves happily married: What color are your wife’s eyes? This was among the questions. And he had thought, Of course, Daria’s eyes are brown. But the next time he looked at her, examiningly, her eyes were a yellowy green, cat’s eyes. And the next time gray, as now. In another article, another magazine somewhere, it said that people with variably colored eyes are especially prone to mental illness. He himself thinks, or at this moment he decides, that it is simply a question of light; the too bright light at noon in this white, white room has grayed Daria’s eyes. Besides, she looks tired, almost drained. Traveling is sometimes hard on women.

To divert her, and to cheer them both, he says, “Well, I talked to New York this morning, and the market has really gone crazy this week. I mean, it’s terrific. Guess how much money we made—just take a guess …”

“Try. In one week. Just guess.”

“Six million?” Raised gray eyes.

He laughs. “You’re funny, you really are. Well, okay, not
quite that much. But would you believe—three hundred grand?”

“Three hundred grand?” She has managed to make the phrase sound foreign, even crazy.

He translates for them both. Three hundred thousand dollars, in one week.

“Oh.” She sounds disappointed.

Rather wildly, he says, “And you’ll never guess who Al is sure will run in ’68.” He says a name.

Startlingly, Daria says, “But didn’t he lose to Kennedy in 1960, and make that terrible speech about not kicking him around any more?”

Her bursts of accuracy sink Smith’s heart. Why is he most frightened when she is most reasonable? But he chooses to answer as though they were having a reasonable conversation. “You’re absolutely right, of course,” he says. “But really in politics it’s anyone’s guess.”

However Daria has already lost interest in this exchange, and in a dull gray voice has begun to say, “I’m sorry I was so late, but I found this really lovely store, a window full of cameos, on the Piazza Navona, and I ordered—”

Later they go back to their hotel, above the Spanish Steps, back to their room with the wonderful view of Rome, and Smith fucks her twice. Two times.

In the suburb of some city, probably Naples, going to or perhaps away from the airport, their hired car breaks down. Smith and the driver go off somewhere to see about it, and Daria, perfectly safely, is left outside the small plaster wall, terribly painted blue, that surrounds a tiny geranium-decked house, also blue. It is a confrontation; Daria is confronted and challenged by that house. Who lives inside, and what is it like to live there?

The wooden doorstep is worn down, the lintel crooked.
Crisp red curtains flutter at the window. (What do they mean?) In the yard is an empty clothesline, a broken wheelbarrow. Is the house, then, abandoned, or are its people simply out shopping, to return momentarily? Are they the recent victims of calamity, some accident, all now gathered around a bed in some nearby hospital?

What does that house mean?

When Smith and the driver come back to the car, bringing a mechanic who fixes it in five minutes, Daria is weeping in the back seat, at the failure of her imagination.

In Paris, Daria gives away—“loses” is the explanation for Smith; she is tired of inventing jewelry that will never arrive—lovely new francs amounting to about nine hundred dollars, Smith says. Nine thousand—ninety? It is hard to be sure.

And again the money is given to an old woman, ragged and poor. “Has it occurred to you that in some way you are placating your mother, Josephine?” one of Daria’s eventual psychiatrists will ask. No, Daria will want to say; how could a poor woman remind me of strong and successful Josephine? It’s just that old women look poorer than anyone; it’s just that I am a woman. The ragged old women remind me of myself. But she will not say this. Why bother?

An international conference having to do with money is going on at the Amstel, in Amsterdam; that is why Daria and Smith are there. It is their final expensive hotel. In the corridors and the elevators are those worried and highly specialized men, pale and serious and sexless, dark, heavy with inside information. Daria finds them frightening, and she dislikes that massive gray hotel, a fortress, piled up on the banks of the wide canal.

She escapes to walk alone beside other, smaller canals. This is all right. Smith is extremely busy, and the city is quite safe.

It is early fall; in that cool northern seaport city, the leaves have begun to turn pale yellow. Arched stone bridges, cobbled sidewalks beside the narrow dark brick houses with long windows of gleaming glass. Storefronts displaying pewter and porcelain, wooden dolls, bread and cheese. In those streets nothing is dangerous but the veering bicycles, and those at least make no noise, no fumes. Walking, stopping to look and to breathe the fresh cool air that smells of leaves and of fall, Daria experiences a lightening of her spirits, and of her senses; it is like an experience of love. She feels safe and inconspicuous, beautifully alone.

Fat blond babies who look more Dutch than anyone smile up from comfortable prams; there seem to be no poor people. Some shabby students, yes, and even funny-looking American kids, boys with long hair (hippies, a word that Daria has not yet heard), but all animatedly talking. Not worrying to her.

No sad old women.

She
likes
Amsterdam; “love” is a word that Daria does not use when she can help it. She likes it better than anywhere she has ever been—except, possibly, Maine, that house. But Maine is too exciting, really disturbing, the thrilling dark wind-torn lake, sharp mountains and violent rotting smells of apples. Amsterdam is human-sealed, is peaceful.

And what a handsome couple they are, there in Amsterdam, she and Smith in the huge Amstel dining room. As though she were somewhere else in the room—were, perhaps, that small dark-blond man in the corner—Daria can see them, see herself and Smith. They are the lovely young couple at the important window table overlooking the terrace and the broad canal. Her cloudy winged hair, yellow eyes, her gray baroque pearls; his thick dark hair, white brow and wide brown eyes. She can see them clearly.