The Dividing Stream (41 page)

‘‘Take care, take care!’’ Lena exclaimed to Max, and she gripped his arm, as he swerved to avoid a lorry.

‘‘Sorry, I’m driving abominably,’’ he said gloomily. ‘‘I wasn’t thinking. I was thinking of something else.’’

She looked for a moment at his face in profile. Her hands, the square nails of which she had painted especially for this evening, were holding her furs together in a gesture which, though she imagined it to be seductive, in fact only served to emphasize the raw-boned ugliness of her shoulders. Her lips were apart, their outsides crimson and their insides pale pink. There was lipstick on her teeth. ‘‘I hope you will enjoy this evening,’’ she said; and the strange thing was that in spite of all the grotesque details of her appearance, her love for Max lent her at that moment what was almost a grave beauty. Her dark eyes had never seemed more tender, or the irregularities of her face more attractive.

He suddenly said: ‘‘You have helped me so much, Lena,’’ taking advantage of Mino’s uproarious laughter with the children in the back of the car.

‘‘I?’’

‘‘Yes, you.’’ He was naturally sentimental and he added: ‘‘I look upon you as another daughter, you know—a grownup daughter.’’

Anyone who was not in love with him might here have flinched; but Lena only said: ‘‘I’m glad, Max.’’ He had asked her to call him Max the day before.

The performance was to be held out of doors, and they had to make their way to their seats down a narrow lane of canvas sagging inwards on rickety bamboo poles. Mino who, for some inexplicable reason, had brought a large umbrella with him on this hot night of August, began to run it along the canvas as he walked so that it made a loud, rasping noise. ‘‘What are you doing?’’ Lena said crossly; but he was in such high spirits that he only guffawed like a naughty child and continued the action. ‘‘Why bring an umbrella, anyway?’’ she demanded: and when he did not answer at once, she snapped: ‘‘Mino! Listen to me!’’

‘‘Because it matches my evening-dress,’’ he explained gaily.

‘‘No, it doesn’t. The umbrella is black and your evening-dress is green,’’ she retorted rudely.

Suddenly his laughter died and the umbrella fell limply from the canvas. But that evening he was irrepressible and no sooner had they seated themselves than he began to ask the children Italian riddles which he invariably had to explain to them, at great length and to their obvious boredom. At last, more to escape from him than from any real inclination, they announced that they must be excused before the performance began and chased each other, giggling wildly, along the canvas lane which led to the cloak-rooms. Lena was looking over Max’s shoulder at the programme, and Mino was now meditatively rubbing the handle of his umbrella, stained black with sweat, as he gazed in turn at the curtain and at the two others. It was a strange handle which just failed to make a proper curve owing to some fault of seasoning.

Mino suddenly said: ‘‘ Look at my umbrella.’’ He held it high; and Lena at once knew, from a familiar glint in his eyes and an expression of suppressed mirth, that he was going to make a witticism. When the witticism came, it was even more appalling than she had imagined possible: ‘‘ My umbrella has no self-control.’’ He indicated the outward thrust of the handle. ‘‘No self-control,’’ he repeated; and Lena and Max both stared at him with expressionless faces while he chuckled, checked himself, and then slowly began to go crimson with embarrassment. From time to time it was his habit to come out with some ribaldry of this kind.

Colin and Mino evidently enjoyed the opera, though it made Max and Lena yawn, and Pamela giggle. The stage was so narrow that the singers kept colliding with each other, the back-cloth suggested the tour of a musical comedy in the Far East, and the tenor, who was some five feet high, was wearing high heels. But Mino hummed the music to himself, falsetto, with his hands clasped between his knees, and Colin nudged Pamela indignantly when she lost all control of herself. Lena gazed occasionally at the stage, but more often at the sky above her, at the audience before her, or at the face at her side. Max shifted uneasily because the wooden slats of his seat were pressing into him.

After the first act, Mino bought them glasses of a sticky orangeade which Max and Lena placed surreptitiously under their seats after they had drunk no more than a quarter; fortunately Mino was too busy making gurgling noises in his own glass with a straw to notice this abstinence. He had also bought some equally sticky nut-brittle, which he twisted this way and that in his perspiring paws in an effort to break it into pieces. He laughed and gesticulated and continued to make outrageous jokes, but some part of his gaiety seemed to be incessantly trickling away, as if through an invisible puncture. One end of his black tie was beginning to work loose.

At the conclusion of the second act, Lena whispered to Max: ‘‘Let’s go out. I shall need something more intoxicating than that filthy
aranciata
if I’m to survive.… No, don’t ask him too,’’ she at once checked Max. ‘‘Let’s go alone. He can keep an eye on the children. We’re just slipping out a second,’’ she announced to the others. ‘‘Goodbye.’’ She waved a hand, and as soon as she and Max were out of the row, exclaimed: ‘‘Saved! I was sure he would follow us.’’

‘‘Where shall we go?’’ Max had not failed to notice how Mino, having gathered himself to follow, had then sunk back into his chair on realizing they did not want him. A rush of guilt made him answer sharply: ‘‘There’s such a crowd! We’d have done better to stay where we were.’’

‘‘Now don’t be so grumpy. We can slip out through here”—Lena pulled apart two of the flapping canvas sheets—‘‘and there’s a little bar just across the road. I know it well.’’ She laughed: ‘‘It will be good for you to see how we of the other half live. Come!’’ With a certain self-consciousness she linked her arm in his and drew him through the crowds.

‘‘What will you have?’’ she asked when they were standing before the veined marble counter.

‘‘Damn!’’ He had placed his elbow in a smear of coffee and began to mop at himself with a handkerchief. ‘‘Let me do this,’’ he said.

‘‘No, no, of course not. I asked you.’’

‘‘Well, what do you suggest? I’ll have what you have.’’

‘‘
Due Americani
,’’ Lena said to the man behind the bar.

They carried their glasses, misty with ice, over to a small wicker table and sat down, Lena slipping off her furs to reveal shoulders in which she obviously took an unaccountable pride. She was aware that the crowd round the bar and the four men playing cards at the next table were all watching her, and she experienced a fierce joy. She sipped at the bitter drink and said: ‘‘This is fun. Isn’t it?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Max said. ‘‘Yes, it’s gay here—gay and’’—he sought for an adjective—‘‘ and kind of colourful. It’s the real Italy, I guess. One so seldom sees it.’’

‘‘I am always seeing it,’’ she said. ‘‘Tonight it seems gay, but it does not always seem so. I think I prefer the Palazzo d’Oro. But of course for you Americans it must be fun to go slumming every now and then.’’ Suddenly there was bitterness in her voice, as if she were attempting to provoke him to some emotion, no matter what. ‘‘I used to work in an office next to this bar and sometimes I came here for coffee. It was warm in winter, that was why I came.’’

‘‘Tell me about your life,’’ Max said. ‘‘You know, I know absolutely nothing about you.’’

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders: ‘‘Oh, there’s nothing to tell. My father was an army officer and he died in Somalia when I was six. Once we had money, then we had less, now we have almost none. I work for you and I keep my mother who is always ill—and Signor Commino wishes to marry me,’’ she added with a sudden, artificial laugh. She stared down at the glass and he thought she was going to burst into tears; but instead a blush, agonizing in its intensity, swept up from her bare shoulders. ‘‘I shall not marry him,’’ she said.

‘‘And what work will you do, when I go?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

‘‘I must do what I can to find you something else.’’ He looked at her and added: ‘‘Unless you would like to come to England to work for me there.’’

‘‘I? To England?’’ She was incredulous. ‘‘But how can I possibly——?’’

‘‘Why not?’’

‘‘But my mother——’’ she began. ‘‘Oh, there is nothing I should like more, nothing, nothing! But it is all so difficult. You do not understand how difficult it is.’’

‘‘Well, think about it.’’

‘‘Of course I shall think about it.’’ She gulped what was left in the glass and said: ‘‘You are so kind to me. And I have always wanted to visit England. But—’’she stared down at the sawdust on the floor and then twitched at her furs—‘‘it is my mother,’’ she said. ‘‘No, it is impossible. Impossible,’’ she repeated on a strange, dying note.

‘‘You are the best secretary I have ever had.’’

‘‘Oh, nonsense!’’

‘‘I mean it, Lena.’’

She looked at her watch, her face still expressing pleasure at the compliment, and then said: ‘‘ I suppose we must go back.’’

‘‘Oh, must we? It really is torture.… Listen!’’ He cocked an ear and said: ‘‘It’s already begun. Can’t we stroll until the others come out?’’

‘‘Why not?’’

Suddenly a scruple overcame him: ‘‘But Mino——?’’ he said. ‘‘Won’t he be hurt?’’

‘‘Oh, let him!’’

They walked arm-in-arm up and down the street, and then round the Duomo, gazing from time to time at a sky that was brilliant with stars. Because they were in evening-dress they were stared at, but neither of them cared. Lena was telling him about her father and how the few of his relics that had been sent back from Somalia had been stolen in passage, and then she described her life with her ailing mother and her one brief love-affair with an English clerk who had been stationed in Florence and had later turned out already to have a wife. ‘‘Poor Lena!’’ Max exclaimed. ‘‘What a life you’ve had.’’

Meanwhile Mino fidgeted in his seat, incessantly turning round to see if they were coming in; he had bought them an ice each, but the two packets were already limp and soggy. At last he got up and went to the back of the ramp on which the seats had been placed, and stalked up and down, peering in all directions. He explored each of the canvas lanes. No, they had gone, they had left him, they had been bored. Someone in the audience hissed at the sound of his ceaselessly plodding feet, and he stopped, ineffectually pushing the end of his black tie under his collar and staring at the monstrous shadow which his body cast on the canvas screen beside him. From the stage poured light and noise and movement; in himself there were darkness, silence and death.

After the performance he did not show his disappointment and even if he had, Lena was too happy to have noticed it. As she said good night to Max she whispered: ‘‘ I shall think of that idea. I shall try to make it possible.’’

‘‘Yes, try,’’ he said. He walked up the steps of her house with her, and kissed her, briefly, behind the door, where the others could not see them.

When he reached the hotel there was a letter for him, with a Swiss stamp:

D
EAR
M
AX
,

You see that I am here in Zurich, where I came to find
Maisie. But she left unexpectedly for Salzburg yesterday and
I haven’t a bean. You said if I ever needed money you would
let me have it and that is why I am writing. You were right
about Frank. He tired of me, and though he never told me to
go, I knew that was what he wanted.

I didn’t intend to ask for money but there’s nothing else for it. Is there?

K
AREN
.

PS. How’s Nicko?

‘‘A
NOTHER
, another!’’

‘‘But, my dear, I have no more paper.’’

‘‘You have
that
,’’ Nicko said, pointing at the sketch-book which lay among the other odds and ends in Mrs. Bennett’s string-bag.

The old woman hesitated, and then pulled off the elastic band which clasped the book together and ripped out a sheet. ‘‘What is it? What is it?’’ the child demanded. ‘‘Let me see!’’

‘‘Rodolfo and Enzo.’’ She stared down at it for a moment, bunching her lips so that the deep furrows around her mouth all at once deepened; then, swiftly, she began to fold another boat.

‘‘Don’t you want it, Granny?’’ Nicko asked; he had not imagined that she would take the suggestion seriously.

‘‘No, I don’t want it.’’

‘‘It was a beautiful drawing.’’

‘‘No, it wasn’t,’’ she said gruffly. ‘‘There! Take it. But don’t fall into the water.’’

She watched the child as he scrambled down an incline strewn with fragments from the destroyed bridges, and called: ‘‘Be careful, Nicko! Be careful!’’ He was going to the place where an endless gush of water foamed and roared out of a tunnel to join the sluggish river; he had discovered it for himself, and now always insisted that she should take him there when they went on their walks. She made him paper-boats and he would launch them in the rushing waters; and then he would stand, one hand shielding his eyes, as he watched them sweep into the river, bobbing up and down, whirling round, and in the end either sinking or travelling so far that they were lost to his gaze. He did not know, as she did, that the water, glittering so beautifully in the sun as it poured from the hillside, in fact came from a sewer.

After he had launched the boat, he still watched the water, rapt away by its speed and noise and power; and she still watched him. Though it was now late afternoon, the sun made her head ache and gave her a tight pain between her eyes, as if from too much scowling. But from here, among the scattered chunks of masonry, the sewer looked pure as it flashed into the sunlight from the dark of the tunnel. It looked beautiful, as the child looked beautiful, with one brown arm raised to his face, his legs sturdily apart, and his fair hair gleaming. Beyond him the semi-naked children of the city splashed and shouted in the brown scum of the river; and beyond them was the outline of the city, dissolving in a heat-haze, the blue mountains and an intense blue sky.

… The water was clear and cool, she thought, it was aerated, coming like that from the hillside, and ice-cold; it would sting the tongue and make the teeth ache, and afterwards it would leave a delicious feeling of satisfaction. So many years ago they had drunk at the stream at Fiesole, he cupping his hands over the thin spirt of water and then raising them to her mouth. The carriage had been left where a cart-track led off the high-road and the three of them, her friend, the man who was to become her husband, and herself had trudged up through the dust and heat and incessant shrilling of cicadas to find the ‘‘view’’ which had at first sent them on the errand. He and she had never found it; they had found the stream instead.