 CHAPTER VII. The New Year brought slight change to Kurt. Study was the important thing. Korlov, the craved old teacher of composition, to his great surprise, presented his name for a foreign scholarship. He was doing well. His quiet zeal was winning him attention, rather tardily, but surely, just as it had in college. The bleak days of January and February went by uneventfully. March brought with it a hint of spring. Without warning there came a day that was spring, spring unmistakably, even in this armored city. The air had in it a vague and teasing softness. People dreamed along the drive as he came home, and sat absently on the long-dissused and sooty benches. Work was a burden. He had left early for home, and caught an uptown bus. He let three pass, for he wanted one with an open top. He climbed the narrow iron spiral, and swayed to the front seat. He took off his hat, and stretched himself to a new receptivity. Work, everything, seemed, of a sudden, unsatisfactory, and of little consequence. He was lonely. There was no one else on the bus-top, and he wanted someone, any one, to be there. He wanted Derry, he wanted David. He wondered why Chloe hadn't written, and what she would write. He swung off the bus at a convenient stop, crossed the roadway, and sauntered along the path. Got a match? The chap was young and good-looking. He looked as if he would like to walk along with him. Kurt gave him a light, and walked on. He wished, suddenly, inexplicably, that he had waited, and walked with the boy. Maybe he was lonely, too. The river, under a miraculously blue sky, was like blued metal. The melody of a Mozart sonata went like a silver chain through his head, looping and re-looping its fragile loveliness through him. It carried him to his door. But the door today seemed not so much a door as a barrier that would shut him out from this new, yet perennial softness that was in the air. He hated his winter clothes. He changed them and come out again, let the lesson go hang for once. There wasn't much light left. On the table was a letter. It was from Chloe. He had been expecting it. If all had gone well, she was free. What would she say? He ran up the stairs, got into a sweater and corduroy jacket, and with the letter still unopened in his pocket, ran out to the street. He found a park bench, and with the promised spring all about him, opened the letter. It was a quiet letter, and he was glad. There was nothing ecstatic about it. He read, I am Chloe Grayling once more. They gave me back my old name. These two months have been hard ones, as you can guess. Mother has been surprisingly decent about it all, but Roy's family hasn't. They made themselves a little ridiculous at first. Later they were openly nasty. But I didn't care much. Oh, what do I feel? As if I had waked up from a bad dream. I want more than anything else I think, a city, a big city to lose myself in. I have a little money, not much. I didn't ask for alimony. Could I? I think. Find a job in New York somewhere. Anything I don't care what. I need a change badly. Mother of course can see no reason for my leaving. I've had an offer of work in the secretary's office at the university. But you know, and she does, if she would admit it, that it's impossible. We simply don't get on well enough together, whoever's the fault may be. There was more. Nothing about the two of them. Saved the satisfaction of being once more able to write. He swung his arms over the back of the bench and looked out across the river. A use for churches, he thought, they do improve the horizon. He grinned at the wickedness of his idea, his mind flashing back to Barton and the Upworth League meetings of years ago. To have Chloe in New York, someone he could see in the evenings or have dinner with. The idea was enticing. His mother would object, he knew, and the hint of responsibility for him that Chloe's letter contained bothered him. He tried to read it again, but it was too dark. If she does come and can't find work and goes broke, what then? What is she hoping for? She knows I can't help her, with money. All the unanswerable questions of Christmas came trooping back upon him. Prudent. Prudent. You're just an old maid. She's simply a good friend, maybe your best friend, and you're afraid she's going to claim more of you than you're willing to give. Forget the practical details, this time, to the deuce with him. But nevertheless his letter to her that night was not too enthusiastic. Work would be hard to find, he feared, and living dear, but he would be glad to help if he could, and it would be nice to have her there. The spring was undoubtedly early, April was saturated with it, tunes as silver and as lilting, as gay and as sweetly sad as a troubadours, chased and patterned through his head incessantly, and he had not the will to catch them and freeze them into black notes and bars. His prodigality amused him, April brought him the scholarship, and his joy in it was very great. A year in Europe, with scholastic requirements not too strenuous, a new land, freedom such as he had never known, a beauty he hoped that he had longed for and dreamed of from boyhood. He would go in June, the summer at Fountain Blue and Paris, a month or so of loafing wherever he chose, then Rome perhaps, and Munich. His head was so full of these provocative names that the present, in spite of the glamorous weather that softened and remade the whole city, seemed hardly worth noticing. And then Chloe came, she arrived almost unheralded. When he came in one afternoon, full of dreams of Fountain Blue and June, the yellow envelope was awaiting him, a swift reminder that this was America and April. Meet me Grand Central tomorrow morning, nine-seventeen, Chloe. He was a little angry, a little afraid. He hoped she'd have money. He was a little low himself, he'd have to find a room for her at once. What would she want, he wondered? Would she be satisfied with a place such as his? What would these two months be like? It was not yet dark, and he went out, scanning the stone fronts of houses on the crosstown streets, for rooms to let signs, trying to imagine from the non-committal brick or stone or graded doorways what the inside might be like, and always rejecting the house as for some reason unsuitable. Finally he gave up. He would be as well to wait until she arrived. She looked not much different. She was pathetically glad to see him. They stood together in the concourse, oblivious of the milling people all about. She held up her face and looked at him, saying over and over again, O Kurt, it's so good to see you again, so good! And it was good, he was glad to see her, and he despised himself for his timidity and his worryings. She was here, and he was glad. That was enough. He squeezed her arm and, laughing, hurried her through the crush of incoming commuters and into the subway. We'll go to my room, he shouted in her ear. As the crowd thinned, they found a seat and shouted inanities at each other, happy as two children. An old man came across the aisle and smiled at them and nodded his head benevolently. They came out into a world bright with April sunshine. The nicest part of a subway ride is coming out, isn't it, Kurt? You're learning fast! Oh, I like this! She said as they swung over the shallow ridge of a hill and the river spread before them. The trees were faintly green, and the wind blew a colored Sunday supplement crazily, hesitantly down the street and against their feet. They both laughed at its antics and they kicked themselves loose from it. Once in Kurt's room, Chloe took off her hat, arranged her hair, and sat down on the bed. It was strange having someone here in this room. No one had entered save himself in the cleaning woman since he took it in the fall. He felt that this was something unprecedented, dangerous. They talked for a long time, of Derry and her mother and the feeling and reactions of the past two months. Then he told her of his scholarship, watching her closely. In June, Kurt, you'll be going? Yes, in June. Won't it be great? Oh, it will, it will! She sighed her pleasure. I'm so proud of you, Kurt, and so happy for you. It's what you've wanted, isn't it, and you do deserve it. It seemed genuine. His imagining had been all askew. If it were true, as Roy said, that she had said she loved me, he probably hounded her and drove her into it. He could hear Roy's monotonous voice drilling, accusing, torturing, until she might say almost anything to silence it. She had some money, he found, not much. They had lunch sitting at a counter in a gleaming drugstore and started hunting a room. She was not fussy. Price was the most important consideration. They found one that suited, not far from Kurt's own. If it's too far from whatever work you find to do, you can move after your month is up. Life changed, unbelievably. The loneliness, the monastic concentration on a single end, was gone. There was the coming year to plan for. There was Chloe to talk to. Evenings were no longer blank expanses between dinner and sleep, to be filled in with minute and worrying manipulation of notes and rests and signatures. Chloe, furthermore, was in luck. She got work almost immediately in the registrar's office at Columbia. Won't mother rave, she said to Kurt. You could have done exactly the same work and got more money for it right here at home, and had no expense, and here you go trailing off to New York. And so on, ad finitum. But it's so marvelous to be away, Kurt, to be really free. I never have been, you know. It was mother first, and then Roy. Most people make the break when they go away to college. They leave their families behind. But we never went away, you see, Dairy and I. We just stayed. And there was no change. That's been the whole trouble, I think. Mother shrinking and hardening inside, and we growing and expanding, the two of us getting farther and farther apart. Mother fighting all the time for the widening of the breach, fighting, fighting, never seeing its necessity, and never giving in. Evenings were now something to look forward to. They would meet for dinner somewhere. Sometimes they would go to a movie, and sit restfully in the dark. The flicker and shift of reflected light, playing over them and their quiet neighbors, while the organ trembled, melting sentimentalities. Then a stroll along the river, and on the steps of Chloe's house, a laughing good night, and a promise for the next evening. Sometimes she would meet him at Korlov's studio in the fifties, and on a Fifth Avenue bus-top they would go to Washington Square, through the glitter of a New York dusk, for supper, in some pseudo-Bohemian restaurant, where other people from other towns, not New York, were trying to look as though they had been born to the Bohemian Purple. They knew it to be fake, but found in the dim lights, the candles, the gay china, the air marbled with smoke, something desirable. Then there would be a symphony concert to hear, and an exit into the den of the city again when it was over. With a new armor to withstand that den, a shining armor woven of sound against the age, an armor in which one could walk the whole night splendidly and forgetfully. Again they would dine hurriedly near the square, and walk through the squirming life of the east side, down Allen Street, under the dark thunder of the L, past windows crowded with pink and blue quilts and shining brass pots and candlesticks, for people from uptown to exclaim over. Or when it rained, they would go sit in Kurt's room, while the water rushed and pounded on the gable, and gurgled down the trough with a soft insistence. Chloe was good company, his friend, his sweetheart. He fancied so sometimes, though no word of it passed between them, and always at the thought the image of Derry or of David rose, forcing the thought from him, and he knew where his love lay. She was so like Derry, and yet so different. He fancied in her eyes sometimes a hunger that frightened him, and set him to wondering. He was twenty-two, and so far, as girls went, ignorant as a child. Something in him told him to experiment, and find out for himself. What if you were all wrong in your fine idealizing, it said? You're afraid that's all. He felt the hunger growing in Chloe. She had been married, her knowledge frightened him. He had seen the look in the eyes of girls along the drive in the April twilight. And because it hinted of mysteries into which he was uninitiated, it embarrassed him invariably, and sent him hurrying on with lowered eyes. He had seen the same look in David's eyes, but that he now understood and could cope with. He looked about him in the streets, and was ashamed. He seemed sometimes to be surrounded by boys younger than himself, who were years older in experience. He almost hated his parents at such times for not letting him dance, for not making him want girls. Or was he really incapable of loving a girl? Was he really different, really one of the beings he read about so zealously? He was, of course. It had all been decided, and the ground fought over a thousand times. Yet some increment of uncertainty made him torture himself still with analysis. He could never tell Chloe, of course. How was he to make her understand? It was a threatening afternoon, low clouds, like dark wool, hung almost to the treetops, and the air was oppressive with the promise of rain. They had supper, and were walking towards the river when the rain broke and great spattering drops on the pavement. They ran the last block and arrived in Kurt's room wet and laughing and breathless. You'll have to get dry, it'll probably stop soon. He gave her his dressing gown and a pair of slippers. She spread her clothes on the cold radiator and propping the pillows behind her, lay back on the bed. His desk lamps sent oblique shadows up the sloping panes and angles of the ceiling, and made a broken half-light in the room. I'm glad you let me take care of you once in a while, Chloe. It makes me feel responsible and almost grown up. Grown up, she laughed, you silly boy. You know ever so much more than I, and I believe you're quite aware of it, you're fishing. He shrugged his shoulders, in books, maybe, in lots of ways you sense things, you overhear things, you're bigger than you know. You say that because you are a poor, deluded creature, Chloe, and he smiled at her. Your slippers coming off, you will die insisting that I'm an artist. If I ever have a biography written of my funny life, I shall certainly want you to do it. Don't say that, Kurt. Have the real thing, or will be. Maybe I'm not a very good critic for you, but I won't have you say that. There you see, illogical lady. In one breath you say I'm wise, in the next you say I don't know myself. And to know oneself, platonically speaking, is the very essence of wisdom. Knowing as I know, however, isn't everything. Experiencing counts, too. At least the wise men say it does, and I've experienced very little. I've never even been desperately ill since I was a baby, and that doesn't count because I don't remember it. I've never been hurt except in little annoying ways. I almost wish I could be sometime. She was silent, looking at him curiously. Then she said slowly, and do you think that my marriage has given me an experience you haven't had, perhaps need? She had come to the point brutally. He would have preferred not to say it. To play with the idea, but not to admit it. How should he answer? He was afraid, again afraid of those direct confessions, these turnings of his feelings and his thoughts inside out, particularly to a woman. Perhaps that. It wasn't a beautiful experience, Kurt. It should have been, too, since it was my first. But I didn't love Roy ever. I think, though I told myself I did, and did my best to pretend what was in her eyes. She could teach him if she would, and if he dared. But did he really want to know? Come here, Kurt. He went to the bed, and she took his hands in hers, and looked at him searchingly. Sit here. He sat beside her. I'm going to do something for you. She seemed suddenly old and wise, and he incredibly young and inexperienced. Her hands clasped behind his head, and she drew him down over her until their lips met. Her breasts were warm and soft against him, and her lips hot and moist, too hot, too moist. They fastened upon his own, and something in him went cold and rigid. What was this? A kiss? This shame? This burning shame? Would it never end? The world was one red, endless turning. The world dazed and eons away, and still the lips held him, until it seemed his lips and these other lips were grown obscenely together, and to tear them apart flesh must be torn from bleeding flesh. When it was over he walked blindly to the window and pressed his burning face against the pain that streamed with rain. He wanted to cry. He wanted to disappear forever. Yet she had done it for him. That was a part of knowledge. He felt old again, but no happier. Chloe lay still a moment, then rose, slipped on her dress, pressed his hand in passing, and was gone. What did she think of him now? He could have possessed her completely, and he had felt only helpless dismay and a shriveling disgust. This was nature, raw, and living. He did not want it. He walked to the mirror and stared at his image. Kurt Gray, Kurt Gray, what are you? What will all this mean to you? Years are going on and on. Dairy will marry sometime, you know. David, dare you count on David? Oh, what does one do when one gets older? Kurt put on his slicker and walked in the rain aimlessly, steadily, until he was too tired to walk farther. Then he went dully to bed. There was a reticence between them now. Chloe's hunger was unappeased. His own, or the one he had suspected might lurk in him somewhere, undiscovered, did not exist. They walked and talked as before, but something like an invisible wall had come between them. May was going, and on June 8 he was to sail. The news of his scholarship had brought him many letters, congratulatory, sad, envious. His mother and father were proud of him, but not quite reconciled to his going so far away. His mother's letter made him sorry for her, but glad for his independence. They did not feel they could come to New York to see him off, and it was this that hurt his mother most. It hurt him, too, but he steeled himself and wrote her pleasant cajoleries and gay expectancies of the summer and the coming year, and promises of the fine things he would bring back to her. Dairy was graduating, and Mrs. Grayling, with an unexpected generosity, had promised him a hundred dollars. He was going to use it to come to New York and see Cardoff and visit his sister, and, if all went well, perhaps to stay. David was coming, too, to spend the summer in Woodstock, sketching. His letters were still ecstatic, still counting the hours till I see you, letters. If it had not been for Chloe, his happiness would have been complete. He had failed there, and he could not learn what she thought of his failure. There was no stiffening of the will that could drive him to success there. He felt reproach in her look, in the touch of her fingers on his sleeve, although nothing further was said. He was to sail Saturday. Dairy and David were coming on Friday morning. Thursday he finished the last details of tickets and passport and visa and packing. Friday should be a gala day. Thursday evening it was warm, uncomfortably so. The air was still and humid, and above the city the stars were brilliant in a flannel sky. He took Chloe to dinner in the village. They smoked and talked, and finally took a bus as far as Central Park, where they joined the other loiterers who strolled aimlessly up and down the graveled path. They found a deserted bench beside a pool that reflected the stars and was recurrently sheened blue and crimson, blue and crimson, blue and crimson. As a great electric sign across the park flashed against the sky. A hundred, a thousand, an endless number of benches here, in every city of the world, holding each two lovers. We might be any of these lovers, he thought, as Chloe leaned her cheek against his shoulder, but how strange, how at odds they were with this universal mating, something in him yearned to mix itself in this democracy of love. Why couldn't he, like that young chap in the white trousers, like the sailor who had just passed, take his girl in his arms and make the old, the universal pledge? Of all young men in this early summer night, he alone seemed discordant and perverse. They said nothing. Slow feet scuffled near them sometimes, and the pool flashed blue and crimson, blue and crimson. Suddenly her hand was holding his. It was cold, and his own hand fastened over it, protectingly. Kurt, Kurt dear, her voice was tense and frightened. I'm afraid I love you. He stood up quickly, his fists clenched. Then he turned and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked into her shadowed eyes. Chloe, I was afraid of that, too. You mean you don't love me? No, no, I don't, I don't know what I mean. Only you mustn't, Chloe. I'm not worth it. Dear, dear, don't ever say that. You're worth all I can give you, and more than I can give you. She was longing he knew for his embrace, his kiss, his endearments. It was beastly that she should have to play the lover. He couldn't play up. It wouldn't be fair. He sat down again, miserably. I can't, Chloe, ever. She turned, frightened. What do you mean? I only mean, oh, Chloe, please don't let say any more about this. Kurt, you're frightening me. You're hurting me. What is it? How should he say it? Shame burned through him like acid. You read a book of mine not long ago, Chloe. It was called Love's Coming of Age. Do you remember? Yes, but do you remember a chapter about, about she broke in almost hysterically? No, no, oh no, not that. You aren't that, Kurt. You aren't that. Tell me you aren't. She twisted her fingers in his coat. I'm afraid I am, dear. Sobbing, her head dropped to the back of the bench. He leaned over her, trembling, uncertain. Don't, Chloe. Chloe, Chloe, dear, don't. I like you awfully much. You had to know at some time. It wouldn't have been fair or kind any other way. Don't cry so, Chloe. Please don't. He sat, half-facing her, and drew her head against his body. Listen, dear, you told me once, Chloe, that I was the best friend you had in the world. I'll tell you the same. You're the best friend I have, the best. And such a friendship is worth having, isn't it? Isn't it finer, maybe rarer than the other thing? Such a strange mix-up, such a queer lopsided triangle. Yet the lines are all straight and perfect in their way. I've loved Derry for years. He doesn't love me much, if at all. You love me. Three relations, different, right, wrong, who knows? Don't let it mean unhappiness for you, Chloe. I'm sorry I told you so bluntly. I didn't know how else. If I hadn't liked you and known you so well, I would never have dared. But I knew what you were hoping, or thought I did, and I couldn't let you go on hoping so. Her voice came to him, muffled, yet familiar. It's all right, Kurt, all right. I don't quite understand yet, but I'll try. It's all right, friend, Kurt. Let's walk, we'll feel better. They stood up, and he kissed her forehead, tenderly. Kurt, oh, Kurt. Leaning on his arm, she seemed suddenly happy, transfigured with happiness. This may be the thing that's ours exclusively, yours and mine. All these others, she gestured vaguely in the dark. All these other twos go on in the old way, will go on and on in the new way, and build, oh, who knows what? And arm in arm, like two lovers, Kurt thought ironically, they walked home. His feelings after he was alone, and indeed all next day, even after Derry and David had come, were mingled. He was glad Chloe had taken it so sensibly. It had given her, it seemed, after the first shock, a deep, almost mystic elation. Here was to be a unique, a spiritual friendship. The ideal was his own, but it failed to make him happy. He had given a part of himself, his secret, in vile itself, to another. All the following day, David's eyes were on him, David's two knowing eyes. It was a day for laughing and foolishness. Arm in arm, four abreast, they had swung down the avenue, making jokes of everything they saw. They lunched in the village, they took a subway to Coney Island, and, tiring of the Blair, back again, they went to a musical show. At the end of the evening, they left Chloe at her house, and returned to the hotel. Kurt had given up his room the day before, and taken one here adjoining that occupied by Derry and David. They both came in, and all three sprawled crosswise on his bed, quiet and tired. David, after a few minutes, turned out the light, released the shade to the top of the window, and lay down again close beside Kurt. The room was high above the street, and the city sound came to them muffled and distant, a low cacophonous counterpoint to their thinking. A boat moaned four deep notes, and they all looked up and smiled in the uncertain light. "'Won't be long now,' said Derry, giving Kurt a poke in the ribs. Kurt and David smoked silently, their eyes in the summer sky, luminous through the window squares. David turned at last, took his hand, and spoke slowly. He spoke of many things, and to Kurt he seemed wise and experienced, darkness concealing what he could never help mistrusting, if ever so slightly. He spoke of a cathedral dim with incense, trembling with music, to which young men such as they came to worship. Some were priests in the temple, others were urchins defiling its beauty. They, these three, David and Derry and Kurt, should be a priestly trinity. What they felt for each other was high and fine and worthy. No one outside the cathedral could understand this. They would sneer and perhaps even persecute. But the faith and the rightness of their strange creed must stand, shining and perfect. He took Derry's hand too, reaching across Kurt, and joined all three on Kurt's breast. The three of us, always, priests in the temple, shall it be so. Kurt was strangely elevated. Here was his own ideal, the one he had groped for so long, with such struggle. Told him again in a prose poem, whose symbolism came like a fine and subtle vindication of his own thinking. The night, the street sounds, the curious sense it gave him of being set apart in the midst of a multitude, three human beings bound by one desire, by one splendid ideal, swept him on to a fine and rapturous approval too deep for discussion. You've said it so beautifully, David, was all he could say, and he kissed him. He would have kissed Derry too, but Derry, somewhat disappointingly, had fallen asleep. Kurt and David lay there then, talking softly of the coming year, making promises for the future, a life together somewhere, the three of them, which should be the ideal realized, the cathedral glorified, the service newly consecrated. It seemed only fair to tell David of Chloe. Chloe understands all this, David. He seemed frightened. You mean you told her? Yes, I told her. You were very brave or very foolish, perhaps. No, I don't think so. I know her better than you, David, better possibly than anyone else on earth, and I know she can understand. No woman, Kurt, began, David, but she's different. You must believe me, she is. You must believe me. You'll understand how it came about someday. The towers against the sky were becoming blacker as the sky paled and brightened, and turned to dull ash, to rose, to amber. You'll be tired, Kurt, for your trip. Oh, what difference, Kurt said softly. It all has to be a new adventure, David, for you, for Derry, for me, for Chloe too. What better time to start a new adventure? Only please remember, and make Derry remember, that I'm alone. You two will have each other. I will only have the ideal. It's high enough and fine enough to carry me through, if you both will help me, will you? And not long thereafter, as the great boat swung out into the river, amidst the thicket of waving arms on the pier, he could see the three of them standing together with Chloe's red scarf floating above their heads. A little woman in front of him stood on tiptoe and sang in a strained and excited voice, sailing, sailing, over the bounding main, interrupting herself with little exclamations of, there he is, I can see him, goodbye, goodbye. All this world of departing humans, gliding away from the greater world of staying humans, with so little effort, his throat was tight, and he waved as frantically as anyone else, perfectly aware that none of the three could see him. The people became puppets, the puppets of blur, with a tiny, wavering spot of red that was Chloe's scarf, and under it, Derry, joking probably, Chloe exalted, yet ready to cry, and David, with the disturbing eyes that seemed always to follow him, he felt curiously superior to the waving people on the deck as he pushed through them and sought his state room. End of part two, chapter seven. Part three, chapter one of Better Angel by Richard Meeker. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker, part three, chapter one. He had stumbled on Soverne and the studio, a weakened niece with the usual trips to Cannes and Antibes, to Grasse, to Monte Carlo over the Grand Corniche, a week of pleasantly lonely evenings spent in threading the narrow streets of the old town, of strolling along the promenade while the sea sucked and thundered in the soft darkness. A week of the niece of between seasons, with its crowds of stolid, tweed-clad Germans taking advantage of the reduced rates, its shopfronts half-laddest behind the ladders of painters and window cleaners, its general air of a busy housewife preparing for important company and willing, in the meantime, to be rude to the casual visitor. A week was quite enough. On the last day of his stay, with accommodations already arranged for his departure to Italy, Kurt went wandering again. Soverne, seen from the motor road to Cannes, as a steep hill, bristling with lurching, tinted houses, had piqued his curiosity before. But always when he saw it, he had been enroute to something that seemed more important. Today he took the bus to the market at its foot and started climbing its narrow cobbled main street. The climb was surprisingly arduous. Halfway up, he dropped willingly to a clean-swep doorstep to rest. On up the hill and around the bend, the houses continued, leaning on each other for support, cubicle houses and narrow houses, with walls of cream and accrue, of palest blue and peach and apricot, walls baked to a pastel harmony by the brilliance of the sun, walls pierced with small windows and studded doors and enlivened with pots of geraniums and wash lines gay with starlets and yellows. Hanging like limp, eccentric banners in the heat, an old woman with black shawl pulled tightly over her head and blue skirt making scurls of dust on the cobbles, clattered carefully down the decline in her wooden sabbats. He could have shouted, he continued on up the street, which, with all its divergences, was singularly reminiscent of the great general store across the river in Barton. He passed the church with its massive cracked walls, its deeply recessed windows, and its chalk to face door. He passed three intransingly narrow street entrances that beckoned down the circuitous narrow ways, arched in buttress now and again, until it seemed the whole small town, like a set of carefully balanced dominoes, might depend for its stability on that or any one of its members. A town of surprising light and shade. He passed two painters, American, obviously, at work, the legs of their easels forced into extravagant angles by the sloping of the street, their canvas stools precariously atilt. At last the summit and the walls of the chateau, ponderous and forbidding with its battle-minted top and great ramp which led up to its heavy-carven doors. Yet from the inner court a pepper tree waved a green denial to all this grim exterior, and a mimosa trailed its grace over the broken wall. Beyond the triangular plaza du chateau, the street seemed to end in a blue door, but as he crossed he saw a passageway, almost incredibly narrow, angling off to either side down a sharp incline along the two walls of the house with the enviable door. He took the right turn and gasped at the expanse of blue that rushed up at him, the blue of the maritime alps, like a floating cloud, distant and misted, the blue of the glittering Mediterranean, the blue of the whole arching sky, a blue world washed in gold. He turned again, and against the yellow wall, red, studio for rent. He seemed to know that this was for him. He turned back and knocked at the blue door. The house echoed emptily. He was about to turn away when a voice from somewhere beyond the wall shouted, come around to the garden gate, around here to the left. He was met at the gate by a stocky man with a heavy face and a short neck and a head of very black and very curly hair, closely cut. He was dressed in a flaming orange shirt, smeared with paint and a tattered pair of canvas trousers. Hello, come in, you saw my sign. Yes, I'm interested. Oh, his look was hard to interpret. The garden they were in was irregularly triangular, sloping sharply down and away from the houses with the blue door in a series of terraces. The hole confined by whole walls of stucco weathered warmly mellow, running down to the point of the triangle where they were interrupted by a smaller stucco building with a roof of orange tile. My name's Ruben, Leo Ruben. You've probably heard of me. I'm afraid not. No, I paint at any rate. That's the studio there. He pointed to the small building at the base of the garden. Paint in the house. There's a good north light in the studio, you see, and there are two living rooms underneath that I have no use for. Come along if you'd like to see them. Kurt followed the broad back down a graveled path, six stone steps, through yet another blue door, into a little square room, bright with blue and yellow. The floor was of red tile, the walls plaster, but the crude furniture, the shelves, the dishes, even the tiles of the charcoal oven, which jutted out from one corner of the room, were blue and yellow, as if some part of the world outside had been distilled in the pigment of their coloring. Two tiny windows with blue shutters, painted crudely with the heads of saints, looked out on the Alps. The other room, yet smaller, held only an iron cot, a wooden chair, and a heavy chest. He took possession next day. His first week in Sovereign approached perfection, it seemed to Kurt. There was some loneliness, to be sure, but there was a quietness, a rightness about this new and unforeseen life that was deeply gratifying. He brought forth his oldest clothes and bought a pair of canvas sandals to wear on his bare feet. He discovered the joy of fire of pine cones might bring to an evening, and the speed with which an omelet may be burnt over a charcoal blaze. The piano he had had sent out from Nice was ornate with licorice-colored wood and brass candle holders, but it was not a bad instrument. The tunes he played on it were gay ones. The hills all about were covered with twisting paths. There were no fences, and walking was a joy. There was a gorge dark with craggy rocks and murmurous with its tiny torrent not far away. There were other towns within the scope of an afternoon's walk, where, when the day began to chill, one could get great bowls of steaming tea and Provence honey in blue jars with little toasted buns to spread it on. There were closed gardens where oranges glittered among glossy leaves and walls were more provocative than protective. There were nights when the stars were so bright that the sleeping town glowed dimly in their light. Then his steps would echo alarmingly in the quiet streets, and he would walk quickly, a little guiltily, at this unseasonable hour of tin when all good citizens were snoring in the darkness, until he came to the quieter path of clay and pebbles that led through gorse and ground pine to a hilltop where one could see the town, a pale silhouette against the dark sweep of the sea, and the far glow of lights from Nice, and, to the right, the smaller constellation that was in Tibbys and the ever-repetitive questioning of the lighthouse on the cap. What occupied his mind on these golden days he would have been hard put to tell? The summer at Fontainebleau, pleasant as it had been in many respects with its new friendships, its quaint environs, its almost nightly excursions on foot or bicycle through the clean shadows of laforet, with suppers of coarse bread and cheese and strawberries, and bordeaux at Barbizon or Courbet. The summer had been tiring, too. The slight but certain feeling of obligation his scholarship imposed on him had made him, perhaps, more industrious and more conscientious than many of his fellow students. And now, with two months of loafing ahead, he was glad simply to live, like some young and irresponsible animal in the glory of this new place, to bring himself into a sympathetic kinship with it. He thought of his work very little. There was in him a quiet consciousness that the source, the spring of his inspiration, was there, ready to his touch when he should want it. He thought often of New York and the small triangular world within it that was his. From Dairy and David he heard often. There were only assurances, these from David, of the continuance of the ideal, of the sacredness of it, the certainty of its rightness and its durability. He himself had slight need of such assurance, for the ideal had dominated him with anesthetic persistence since their parting in New York. So fervent was it that he hardly thought of his body at all. Its hungers were fed by a white flame, appeased and nourished and whipped to lethargy by the stark beauty of the ideal. From Chloe he rarely heard and he regretted her silence. The shock she had sustained at their parting must have been, he now realized, greater than he knew. And he wondered at his daring on that distant night. She had seemed to emerge from it. But as he remembered those last few hours with her in June, he had misgivings. She was so strongly a creature of moods. It seemed scarcely credible that the strange reversal of emotion she had displayed that night could have deepened and endured to conviction and acceptance. Then came rain, unprecedented rain. For a week the windows streamed with it. The garden ran with muddy rivulets. The hills were obscured behind the sliding thunderous curtain of silver. All day, all night, the soft thunder of rain. There was nothing to do but sit inside and wait for it to stop. The fire helped to dispel some of the dampness. The curt's depression it could not dispel. Day after day, night after night, the downpour continued. It was hard to work even. For into the music, the insistent and monotonous drum of the rain would force itself. He wrote a song. I have been prisoned with bars that keep more rigorously the stars from shining through my windowpane, that steel, November's leaden rain. It started so, but he gave it up and discussed. And then came a letter from Chloe. It was surprisingly thin. It read, dear curt, I can be quiet no longer. I'm pretty certain you won't know how utterly you are being fooled. Dairy, as I don't believe you are aware, is living with David. They have a studio in the village. God knows what for. They seem, or at least David does, to be happy. As to Dairy, I'm doubtful. David fits into the picture. He is artificial and weak. Dairy, as you know, has very little mind of his own when it comes to relationships such as these. He's carried away with the glamour of this one. They are surrounded by pretty boys and the whole thing sickens me. As to Dairy, I give him up. He's a fool and he'll get over it in time, but you, curt, I like you too well to see you deluded. And I'm pretty sure you are wrong in what you told me the night before you sailed. David has nothing to offer you, but a spineless sort of idealism. And you have too much of worth, curt, to allow him or anyone like him to dissipate it. I seldom see them as I won't go down anymore. David has money from some source. Dairy has a job, though how he keeps it, I don't know. David is supposed to be taking graduate courses at NYU, but he seems to be neglecting them, sadly. Hence that he is writing, "'You are such an incurable idealist, curt. Don't let an inferior ideal possess you.' He read the letter again and let it slip to the floor between his knees. Half thought swirled uncertainly in the aching emptiness and the rain thundered on the tiles and gurgled in the eaves. He put on his jacket and went out into it, bare-headed. The hills were gone, the sea was gone. There were only the rough-cobbled streets streaming with water and the gray walls hedging him in. He walked till he was shivering before he came dumbly back to his own door. His fire was out and he was too miserable to notice his discomfort, too upset to consider how much of what Chloe wrote might be false. He was conscious only that his carefully schemed world, so strange and yet so simple and perfect and to him transparent, like the fragile creation of some skillful glassblower, had shattered. His faith that had kept him aloof and assured through these lonely months was dissipated. He could have laughed had he not been too choked with despair, the despair of disillusion. Fool, fool, fool, beat and echoed emptily in him. It was then that the unforeseen, the coincidence that makes life often seem so fictional and fiction so living, occurred. The postman brought a telegram. It was from London and two days overdue. It read, arriving niece Wednesday, train blue, may stay some time, how about Severn, can you meet me, Tony? Tony McGarran. He looked at the telegram again and realized with a start that this was the day. His watch told him that he had but half an hour to catch the bus to Nice and he must meet Tony. He threw on his coat and slipped and clattered down the rubed piolette. He was just in time. He hardly knew what he felt, Tony McGarran. He knew he would be glad of Tony's company but Chloe's letter above all else rang in his ears. Tony he had hardly expected to see again. On the boat coming over he had first seen him. A slender, golden young man with light hair, very wide blue eyes and a sensitive, thin-lipped mouth whose smile was a delight. On shipboard he was everywhere, knew everyone, and yet he was not too bumpiously self-assertive. He knew everyone, that is, save Kurt, who sat in his deck chair with a book and looked on. Kurt fancied sometimes at dinner on deck that this young man whose name he did not know and whose very genuine popularity faintly irritated him was watching him curiously and his indifference became more noticeable. The last night out he was on the foredeck. It was a brilliant night with a great low moon and a smooth sea. In the morning they would be in France and at noon in Southampton. The dull vibration of the ship's motors slowed and a far small light to the left, flashing in yellow deliberation, was England. He stood, bare-headed, for a long time, the soft wind folding in around him until the strolling couples had all gone and he was alone. Then, of a sudden, he was not alone. Hello, oh, hello, grand night, isn't it? You, I don't think I've met you. I've noticed you so often. You seemed, if you'll pardon my saying so, so well worth knowing. You're Kurt Gray, aren't you? I'm Tony McGarran. He looked at Kurt, smiling. Kurt regarded him curiously, shyly. He, too, was bare-headed. Over his dark coat a white scarf was wrapped like a stalk around his throat. In the moonlight the wind whipping his light hair and his head he was bironic, like the pictured hero of some Victorian romance. He went on. You must have thought me an awful ass on this trip, stewing around all day and all night with everyone. You were so quiet yourself. I wish I knew how you do it. I don't seem able to help myself. I always do the same thing. I know everyone and have no friends. He laughed ruefully. And so the conversation began and at last developed into a mutual recital as such conversations are likely to do. On Kurt's part, because in this new acquaintance there was a magnetic urgency he found it hard to withstand, on Tony's because, as he said, he couldn't help it. I'm a conversational exhibitionist, was his own appraisal. He was an actor and he was going to London to appear in a Philip Barry play. He was 21. His father had been Scotch, his mother, Milanese. He had been born in Brussels, educated in Edinburgh and later at an exclusive private school in Connecticut and for a short time at Amherst. He had run away from college in his freshman year and managed to get on the stage in New York where he had met with some success. And now here he was with an aura of adventure about him so different from Kurt's quiet background that there wasn't Kurt an immediate and perhaps slightly envious sympathy for this quixotic young man. They leaned against the rail talking until the first pale rays of dawn showed the dove gray hills and Cherbourg standing against them dim and aqueous. Later in the week they had met again in London. This in the brief stay Kurt allowed himself there before going on to Paris and Fontainebleau. Kurt had seen the play and found Tony to be a surprisingly capable and attractive actor. They had dined together once. Since he had been in Sovereign, he had had three highly dramatic and very brief letters. For life to Tony was a game of leapfrog from one romantic episode to another. His openness to life was a constant dare and things happened to him. Kurt was always amused, half incredulous and invariably surprised because his own life in contrast so smooth and easy to trace. Don Juan and St. Francis in a single body thought Kurt. And here with the unpredictableness of a summer shower was Tony coming to Sovereign. The train fortunately was late. He would have missed it otherwise. The rain had continued to fall and every occupant of the bus in ascending or descending it seemed had taken double the usual amount of time, shaking off the wetness or preparing to brave it. The sun, when Nice was at last achieved, seemed almost incredible and omen. He hoped so as he ran for a taxi and then arrived at the station. He found he must still wait. He paced the platform under the dripping glass roof of the car sheds, now a glitter in the sun and at last with a shrill tooting and an attending and vaporous cloud of steam, the train slid to a reluctant stop. It was easy to find Tony. He descended from his carriage in an aura of correct arriving, the handsome young adventurer doing Europe. A West End topcoat was flung over his shoulders and he was surrounded by a mound of gleaming baggage. Kurt, dodging excited Frenchman, saw him waving an enthusiastic farewell to a dapper officer in the door of a compartment. He turned, ingreeding as enthusiastic, to Kurt, as the train pulled out unnoticed amidst their shaking of hands and furious friendliness. At last, how do we get to Sovereign with all the impedimenta? There was the bus and the tram. But the dazzling trunk, I'm broke, you know. Kurt, not yet familiar with Tony's extravagances, verbal and financial, looked at the expensive luggage and tried to imagine the cost of traveling in a first-class wagon-lit on the train. How about a taxi? How far is it? About 12 miles at a cost of fortune. But a taxi it was and the bill of more than a hundred red francs, which to Kurt seemed enormous, more than a week's rent. Tony paid without question and his tip to the driver was magnificent. It was dark before Tony was finally installed in two unused, hastily cleaned rooms under Rubin's house across the garden. Rubin had consented with his usual gruff reluctance to Tony's occupying these quarters. He muttered in his thick throat and growled his unwillingness. Though all the while, Kurt knew he was eager to rent. And he did his best to make Tony bargain. But Tony agreed to Rubin's first tentative suggestion and only asked innocently when the painter had stopped away. Did he chip me, do you think? Unpacking was for Kurt a diversion and a privilege. The shining baggage was as correct within as without, a dream of sartorial perfection and its disgorgement was accompanied by Tony's staccato recital of his trip from London. Prince Henry had been in the next compartment. Prince Henry came down to Capferat to visit the Duke of Canat. The prince's equity had been most friendly. It was he Tony had waved at in niece and Tony was full of hilarious anecdotes concerning the royal family. Kurt sat in a windowy embrasure, grinning and silent and for the time, forgetful of his trouble. They went for dinner to the small pension near the chateau where Kurt sometimes took his evening meals. The gutters still gurgled with water and the dampness of the cobbles rose vaporous in the early dusk broken by the light of a ripely yellow moon through torn, uncertain clouds. As Tony had been in the boat, so he was in the dining room of the pension, the immediate center of the whole strange group from the plump, rusty-haired lady from Dublin who painted watercolors to the old and somewhat torn, comped debris who, it was reported, had distinguished himself by keeping the harbor at breast, swept free of minds during the war. They were all talking together before dinner was over and the more recent events of Tony's life were known to them all. By the time the inevitable apricots arrived, it was hard to get away. They managed to at last, however, and the fire in Kurt's damp small room was pleasant. A wind, heavy with wet, flowed blackly down the street. Kurt and Tony sat, their feet propped against the tiny stove. Tony talked of himself, of the berry play, of the foibles of a particularly blonde and vapid heroine in English pictures, of a friend's sudden departure for New York and the consequent offer of his house in Chelsea, of the house itself next to the sitwells, of the scotch cook, of the talkie he might make, and then you may just as well tell me what's eating you, Kurt. Kurt's eyes lifted in surprise. What do you mean? Oh, come on, you know you've been, well, if you'll excuse my saying it, you've been on the verge of bursting into tears ever since I came. Rats, you can't fool me, Kurt, me boy. I'm a smart little feller who's been about. You're either in love or out of it, which is it? You're all wrong. And Kurt hugged his secret yet more tightly within him. It shouldn't be told. It must burn itself out, bitterly, smolderingly, hidden. You can't fool me, you know. I'm here to stay for a while, and if you don't tell me tonight, I'll find out tomorrow, or a day after that, or I'm not the man I think me. Kurt smiled half-heartedly. An analysis free of charge, my specialty. You're an introvert extraordinary, and I'm an extrovert, inordinately. How's that for a start? Swell, said Kurt, grinning. But how about it? I thought this was to be an analysis of me. Oh, you'll find me mixed up in it, don't worry. I'm mixed up in everything. Good Lord, Tony! There was no good even pretending at seriousness, and yet the dull pain of the morning had not lessened. Chloe's words, I like you too well to see you deluded, were a persistent minor accompaniment to the inconsequential cadenzas of Tony's chatter. See here, Tony's voice was insistent. I'm really serious now. You feel rotten, and I know your kind. You'll let things eat you and gnaw you until you wear yourself out, and you come to some sort of a melancholy solution in the end, maybe. But it's such a rotten way, such an unsatisfactory way out. If you'd only get it off your chest, it would be over and done with, right? There's nothing wrong with me, Tony, Kurt insisted. Oh, hell, if you're going to be stubborn. They were silent. Kurt feared, and could not tell why he feared, Tony's good night. And yet he waited yearningly to be alone in the darkness. And yet, and yet. I had a letter this morning, Tony, that was upsetting. That's all, really. I'm sorry it's made me disagreeable. You're not disagreeable, you're unhappy. Was it from home? No, no. Not money, no. Then it's what I said at first. Kurt kicked open the door of the stove, and the red flicker of firelight pervaded the room. He felt Tony's eyes searching, quizzical, amused upon him. Isn't it? he insisted. I suppose so. Oh, shan't we call it a day, I'm tired. The sun will be out tomorrow, maybe, and we can walk. I think it's the rain as much as anything. All right, we'll do it. But don't think for a moment that you're shaking me off. I'll be hot on your trail tomorrow, and I'm a great little detective, and a great little comforter too, you'll discover. He rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe. Good night, good night. Now, for heaven's sake, go to bed. Don't sit here and watch the fire go out. It's a romantic and insidious occupation. The next two days were inexplicable to Kurt. He had grown used to being alone, and Tony's presence was a novelty he could not at once adjust himself to. He had a suspicion that Tony was purposely being insistent in his companionship. Certainly he was ever present. Kurt would hear his shout in the morning, with a sleepy start and rise to let him in, clad in silk pajamas and a crimson dressing gown. He would be standing in the garden with a flower or two to decorate the breakfast table. He would launch immediately, and with no reticence whatever, into the narration of more tales of his own life. They were unfailingly amusing, and Kurt marveled at his frankness. He himself could hardly conceive of such shameless disrobing of the past. It made, somehow, his own secretiveness seem miserly. Yet he could not fancy himself divulging these prized, these cherished experiences to any one. He was a miser of his emotions. Tony's talk was principally of one Joda and their mutual escapades. She was a New Yorker to the tips of her trim and efficient fingers. Not beautiful, not even pretty, but smart and with a body slim and fine and sweet and desirable, and ready, apparently, for Tony whenever he should desire it. Kurt watched Tony curiously during these recitals, aware that his own silence must make him seem either very inexperienced or very shy. At the conclusion of each anecdote, Tony would press him for confidences, but Kurt would only put him off, whereupon Tony, with the shrug of his shoulders, would start another tale. I'm a regular Scheherazade, and you will be too, you devil, before I'm through with you. You've probably got a whole harem back in Manhattan and sit here scoffing inwardly at my shabby loves. Isn't it true? Kurt was embarrassed, annoyed, and angry at himself for his annoyance. He liked Tony, one couldn't help liking him. And these stories, so theatrical, seemed singularly at variance with the personality that featured so glowingly in them. Tony was vital to an unusual degree, Kurt realized, but his head was that of a dreamer. And the fineness of his nostrils, the sensitiveness of his lips and hands, belied the animal gusto of his escapades he related. At last, with the bravado sired by desperation, Kurt made the plunge. Tony, I've never had an affair with a girl. What? I mean it, I never have. So if you think you're going to lure me into confidences by these stories of yours, you're mistaken. But Kurt, you're 23, two years older than I, and oh come on, you're not half so surprised as you're pretending. But you must have some outlet, it's not human. Why isn't it human? We're not animals. But we are animals, that's just it. When a boy is old enough to want a girl, it's normal that he should have her. It's animal and normal. If he doesn't, he's abnormal. Yes, Kurt was vaguely angry. That's for me, I suppose. The animal ideal is the right one, of course. Of course it is. You think you're an idealist, Kurt Gray, and you're just damn scared, that's all. I know what life is like in towns like the one you come from. Prudish and petty and religious in the wrong way. I'm a pagan. My parents were always queer, always out of the rut of the ordinary. They died before I was 12, both of them. There have been no anchors tied to me. Kurt was silent. There was truth in what Tony said, and yet he felt a tantalizing certainty that somewhere there was a flaw in the argument, and it irritated him that he could not find it. He could think of nothing to reply, and Tony sat regarding him quizzically. After a time he spoke. Kurt, would you like to hear about my first love affair? I suppose you think I should for my own enlightenment, really though. I've read the usual novels, you know. Don't be sarcastic. I'm not reprimanding you, God knows. Just what are you doing? I'm trying to find out what's wrong with you. You mean wrong with me at the moment or wrong with me generally and permanently? He smiled. Both, and I have a hunch there's one answer. See here. He was suddenly serious and leaned forward. It's not what you think. My life has been so different from yours. I'm years older than you in experience. After my mother died, there was plenty of money for a while. I had a guardian, and I was sent to Kent School when I was 14. I was shy, too, except when I was acting, and I acted most of the time, I guess. I was 15 when they chose me to be leading lady in the school play. I loved it, and I was convincing, I think. The chap who played the hero was 16 and big for his age. He was on all the teams, and I admired him. I'd never dared, really, to try to know him. He wasn't in my class. But there we were, in the play. He was very bashful. The fellows kitted him unmercifully, and he wouldn't rehearse kissing me in the last act. We were both ashamed. The coach did his best, but it wasn't until the last rehearsal that he really did kiss me. You'll think me sentimental, Kurt, but that kiss was something I remember. Neither of us said a word after the rehearsal. I remember. We'd dressed, and because we had so much to do with the play, we were the last to leave. We went out together, I remember. We'd rehearsed in the gym, and Old Pop shouted at us when we went out to latch the door and snap out the lights. Dick snapped off the lights, and we stood in the darkness, with just a square of light through the screened glass door. He came to me. I couldn't see his face, but his voice was thick and strange. Tony, he said, Tony, shouldn't we rehearse that again? And then he grabbed me and kissed me over and over again. And then he shoved me away and ran through the door. He left school at the end of the term, and I never saw him again. That was my first love affair. He settled back, watching Kurt narrowly. That's daring. How had he the courage to tell of this? You're shocked? No. Do I know why you're not shocked? I don't know. Do you? Kurt, though fascinated, kept his eyes on the floor. He was like a diver probing the depth of an unfamiliar pool. He leaned forward again in his chair. Of course I do. You're homosexual. Kurt sprang to his feet and strode to the door, his hand on the latch, his mind pounding with confusion. Tony said nothing, but little stove cracked furiously. At last Kurt turned again, and leaning against the door, fixed his eyes on Tony, who was smiling strangely. I don't like that word. It's highly scientific. Oh, I know that, but it makes me sound like a biological freak of some sort, to be classed with morons and cretins and paranoiacs. And that's probably just what the jolly little scientists would think about it. No, Kurt, it's not the word that hurts you. It's having your little secret dragged out into the light. I was right, wasn't I? Kurt's silence was affirmative. I'm always right. It's intuitive. We queer ones can spot our kind anywhere, anytime. Be honest. On board the boat, wasn't there something between us before we ever met? I knew it, didn't you? Yes, I knew it. You've been over here how long? Four, nearly five months. And you haven't misbehaved even once. Kurt shook his head. He felt willless before this barrage of questioning. All right, I've diagnosed your case. Shall I prescribe? Prescribe. Very well, Mr. Gray, I'll do so. You need two things, like most patients, an immediate relief and a permanent cure. So be docile. Your immediate relief is easy. I'll fix that myself. The permanent cure is another thing. For that, you'll need a mistress. Kurt felt himself pale and a slow anger rose in him. What right had this debonair, this disconcerting youth to unmask him and criticize him and correct him? You think I'm pretty much a mess, I take it. His tone was stiff and hurt. Oh, come, don't be upish. I'm only trying to tell you why you're so damned unhappy, and I'm right. Oh, of course you are right. Cut the sarcasm, I am right. I know your secret, don't I? Tony, I'm sorry I was angry, but I can't help it. You've got my secret all right, but only such a skeleton of it, I... I know all about that, too. Well, such being the case, don't you think it's up to you to do a bit of narrating? Kurt was quiet, thinking confusedly. Why not tell? And yet why? And yet why not? And at last, with an effort, he did. But it was the fire he watched, and one of Tony's slender hands, not Tony's lips, which he feared might curl, or his eyes, which might shine with amused derision. That he did not want to see. So the story came out. His home, his boyhood, his college days, his almost accidental initiation into the strange world of strange young men, dairy, his groping for faith to justify his desiring flesh. David, Chloe, the ironic triangle that had shattered itself on a bench in Central Park. His ideal, always his ideal, Plato and Havlock Ellis, and David's liturgical symbolism, all fused into a high credo by Kurt's own burning need for such a credo. Tony listened quietly to the stumbling end. Then he leaned forward and put his hands on Kurt's knees. Look at me, Kurt. Kurt turned his head and lifted his eyes, half afraid of what the face might reveal. He was reassured. Listen to me, boy. I've heard I don't know how many stories from I don't know how many different fellows about this sort of thing, and how it came to be with them. They're all alike in ways and all different, too. There's something in your story, though, that's stronger than most, because there's something in you that's stronger. You were lucky, you and Derry, to drift into the thing as you did. We're not all so fortunate. He smiled, bitterness twisting his lips. Your story is different there. It's different, too, in having a girl in it all, and it's different most of all because it's cleaner than most, and it's awfully much less promiscuous. Kurt, please don't think I've just wormed these things out of you for curiosity or to satisfy my own perversity. It's not that. Truly it's not. I do think my prescription is right. What about Chloe? The sudden intrusion of the specific again sent Kurt's resistance rising like an icy flood. Girls are out of it, Tony. I've told you that. And I'm telling you, you don't know. You think I'm an enigma because I know both things. I had to make myself be normal, Kurt, drive myself, too, and it was hard as hell, but I did it and I learned to like it. A woman's body, boy, is a sweet thing. But I couldn't, Kurt protested. I'm just not made that way. What do you mean you're not made that way? You're not deformed, are you? Your organs are normal, aren't they? It's mental, Kurt, all mental. Here was the old, old argument again, the one he had fought over so often, so futile, and at last he thought, to a successful finish, begun all over again. He rebelled at it, and at this disturbing creature, whose mind was jousting at his own sad certainty and threatening to topple it once more to the ground. He burst forth. Oh, you know, you know, you don't know. You don't know me, you don't realize what you're saying. Oh, yes, I do. Tony's voice was distressingly calm. I know what your ideal is. It's rather fine, but it won't work. You mean a man can't love a man? You mean I don't love Derry or David or they me? You mean you didn't love the boy in the school play? I don't mean that at all. I thought until I met you. I was disillusioned for good and all. I don't mean you've changed me much, but you've surprised me chiefly. I didn't know anyone of our kind could be so pure and so abnormally innocent, so late in life. He laughed. You say our kind, that means something, doesn't it? Of course it does. I don't say we're like the run of men, we're not, obviously. The run of men are disgusted with our sort of thing, with the disgust we can never fathom. But on the other hand, we can go them one better. We can have their kind of love and ours too. We can love and be loved. We can make love and receive love. We can be man and woman both. And I, teraceous, have for-suffered all and acted on the same divan or bed. What's that? asked Tony. It's a poem, but never mind. There's another line I don't care so much for. Oh, Tony, it all sounds well as you say it. But mine sounds well too, though not quite so glib. The trouble with you is this love business. I know what it is. It's exalting and fine for a while, and then it's a torture machine that eats the heart out of you. It's suspicion and jealousy and unhappiness. It's the bunk, and I'm through with it. How can you get through with it? Love might get through with you, I should think. But how can you get through with love? You can't. You're a deep one, Kurt. And I have a notion that this letter of yours from Chloe is the first real blow your love has had, isn't it? I suppose it is. Well, maybe there will be more, take my word for it. I might even deliver a few myself. What do you mean? Never mind, just now. They fell into an uneasy silence. It was as if an invisible veil had drifted between them, making the harmony each desired a nebulous impossibility. Kurt accepted it glumly. Tony writhed and tried to tear it apart. Look here, Kurt, our problems are so different. I've told you of my amores with various girls. There have been many more fellows than girls. I've been shockingly promiscuous. I've slept about rather indiscriminately, and you wouldn't let me say that of you, Tony, Kurt interrupted, Tony smiled. Probably not, but I have, really. And you've slept with people you didn't love? Good God, yes. That seems ugly to me. Ugly? Not at all. That's where we're so different. You imagine you must have love, whatever that may be, moaning and sighing and mental elation and despair, to justify, to consecrate the animal part of your love-making. That's the bunk. Love-making is just a jolly good game. That's all, like tennis. If I see someone I want to sleep with, for whatever reason, for what he says, or how he looks, or what he is, I do my very damnness to arrange it. And when it's done, it doesn't mean a bit more than a game of tennis would mean. That's the way to take your love, Kurt. Take it for the moment, drop it, and forget it. Do you always forget it? Always. You're lying, Tony, and you know it. Well, perhaps. I make a pretty good job of forgetting at any rate, and that's better than what you're doing this minute. Half sick with worry and fear for someone 3,000 miles away may be doing or saying or being. What about Joda? Oh, Joda, loves all alike, Kurt. People don't think so. You know that, and I know it. We have to be on our guard every minute. It's damn funny these people who call themselves normal can't see that. I've known men who love their dogs and their horses more than their wives, and nobody ever accused them of being queer. Oh, no, they are normal. He meant, and we're perverted. And there's no difference, none at all. You love a boy just as you love a girl. It's less satisfying, but that's physical, and has nothing to do with the emotion. The emotion's the same. Kurt was silent, confused, buffeted about by this strange and perverse discourse as by a playful wind, now in agreement, now in smoldering, inexplicable rebellion. He did not know what he thought, where he stood. He waited dumbly for this dismaying conversation to end. Chloe's letter, I don't want to see you deluded, seemed confirmation enough of the rightness of Tony's hedonism. Yet something dark and deep cried out against it, cried out for the perfection of love, of the unfolding and consummate love that makes of each lover both slave and master, both lover and mistress, for the complete reciprocation of love the poets dream of, for the complete, full, inundating resolution of the dissonances of two personalities. Love is not love that alters when an alteration finds, came ringing to his mind, but Tony, an exasperating tangent, started reciting with the persuasive skill of the actor the subtly poisonous lines of Swinburne. For the crown of our life as it closes is ashes, the fruit thereof dust. No thorns go as deep as the roses, and love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, and loves into corpses or wives, and marriage and death and division make barren our lives. Come here, he said, you're going to take the cure. He took Kurt's hand and pulled him, bemused and uncertain, into the bedroom. End of Part Three, Chapter One. Part Three, Chapter Two of Better Angel by Richard Meeker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker, Part Three, Chapter Two. Breakfast was difficult for Kurt. The feeling of lazy well-being that had lulled him a few hours before was gone. He was self-conscious, seeing himself only as having fallen neatly into Tony's trap. He fussed about the kettle and toast, avoiding Tony's eyes. When at last they set opposite each other at the yellow table, he forced himself to look Tony squarely in the face. He saw there what he had feared to see, a gentle derision. I know you're laughing at me, he said, sulkily. Tony laughed and earnest, oh, Kurt, how funny you good people are. One little slip and you're all upset. One little slip's all that's needed, isn't it? You'd have me think so anyway. I've proven to you now, I suppose, by last night that my ideal, as you call it, was just a sorry illusion. You liked it, didn't you? Tony countered. Yes, I liked it, which weakens my case the more. He waited seriously for Tony's reply. Then what more can you ask? The moment's enough, look, the sun on this yellow table and these blue cups, the steam rising through it. It's rather nice, a moment I may remember, unexpectedly, 20 years from now. A moment that may come floating up out of unconsciousness, like a wooden rosary from a drowned man's hand. You see, the whole problem of life is to get enough moments crowded into it so the spaces between won't be so deadly. But the moments, if they came too close, they'd soon be as common and as dull as the spaces between them, wouldn't they? Tony said nothing for a moment. Then he countered with a question. What would Dairy think about this, or David? Dairy wouldn't mind, I'm afraid. He would think he had made a conquest and be pleased as punch. David would mind, terribly. You're sure David would? Well, he might have thought. Why do you say that? Because I know you're David, at least I think I do. You know him? Kurt was aghast. He's from Philadelphia. Yes, yes he is. And does he, you might not know this. Does he ever mention a friend named Broskin, Ozzy Broskin? Oh, Ozzy, yes, Ozzy is his guardian. Tony looked at him for a moment in amused surprise and then threw back his head and shouted with laughter, his guardian. Kurt puzzled, steeled himself for some new sally. Kurt Gray, how can you be so goddamn innocent? What did he mean? Why say Ozzy Broskin is notorious? He's an American Oscar Wilde, belated in much less clever, but the same type, too heavy, too soft, too old. He's got a place in Philadelphia that is like nothing else on earth. I went there to a party once when I was playing at Schubert's. And what a party. It was there I met your David. Yes? Kurt's breath seemed constricted. Tony did not, or pretended not to, notice his extreme agitation. He has an enormous studio. Why a studio, I don't know. He certainly doesn't do anything. Hung in a sort of saffron yellow Venetian velvet. No furniture, but de-vans and cushions and low tables. So many cushions you could almost walk on them. You don't walk, really, you crawl. It's a sort of glorified mattress. I came after the show and there was a room full of the boys, lying about in heaps. Some were in evening clothes, some quite arty, and a good mini in the most elegant gowns. A black boy, dressed in a gold turban and sandals, passed cigarettes and served champagne. Somebody played somewhere. It got more and more amorous. And there were diversions. Broskin had got from somewhere two kid acrobats, contortionists, really, jabs. And he had used their contortioning to his own ends. He brought them out dusted with lavender powder and they gave a performance that was nobody's business. And David was there. Oh, very much there. He was Ozzie's special prize at the time. So he was in high regard. Kurt, what's the matter? Kurt had risen and walked to the door. Tony rose to follow him. You're white as a ghost. Nothing, nothing, Kurt murmured. I'll walk a bit. And opening the door, he went out. He drew his hands across his eyes at the sudden brightness of the morning sun, stumbled over the cobblestones to the path leading up the hill behind the town. His mind was a torrent of confusion. Chloe was right then. He'd been most awfully duped. David, Derry, Chloe, Tony, David's eyes, Tony's curling lips, Derry's easy enthousiasms, Chloe's pain, always Chloe's pain. He could not understand. And what was become then of this love he had plighted with David that last night in New York, that fine, high ideal? He saw again David's eyes, and his faith came back to him. And then it was all afaced by Chloe's scrawling handwriting, and Tony's so certain phrases, refuting it. The gravel rolled and crunched beneath his feet, and the brightness of the sky and the far gleaming sea seemed gross in pertinences. He flung himself at last into the grass and sobbed with vexation and his own confusion. David's eyes, David's eyes, David's eyes, candid and sure and kind and disturbing. There must be some beauty in all this crassness to cling to. He stopped crying as suddenly as he had begun, cursed himself for a fool, and started down the hill again. At the foot of the path he saw Tony, shading his eyes, searching for him. They waved almost simultaneously and both broke into a run. When they met by an open stable door, acrid with the smell of goats and burrows, Tony seized him by both arms. I'm sorry, gosh, I'm sorry, Kurt. I was jealous of your David, that's all. He's probably a good sort, away from Ozzy. And for that he's probably not to be blamed, all of us, except maybe you, have things we're not happy about and don't talk about. Except maybe you, you mean, queried Kurt, smiling at him. Go ahead, I deserve it. Why do I make acquaintances everywhere I go and so few real friends? They fell into step, walking back towards the house. I don't think you really want to know, do you? Probably I'll be offended and won't believe you. But tell me anyway, I've told you enough, Kurt. You give yourself away too freely, that's all. 10 minutes with you and they know everything about you, except this one thing. And I wonder sometimes how you managed to accept that. You certainly skirted the edge yesterday at the Rubens. When Mrs. Ruben waxed sociological, you remember. I know, I was furious. It was so obvious they liked you better than me, I talked foolishly. Well, try my prescription. I've taken the first dose of yours, and it wasn't bad. And taking Tony's arm, he continued beside him down the hill. Once more between them there was the perfect harmony that comes into being, sometimes, between old friends. A harmony so finely attuned that Kurt anticipated Tony's sudden veer in conversation by the subtle telepathy all friends know. You see, Kurt, in all this you've been fortunate and I've been unfortunate. You've liked, I think, the right people and so far they've not disappointed you. But they have me so many times and I've rushed to the far extreme. You don't know what some of these creatures are, that's all, so you can't understand my bitterness. They turned once more into their own street. Oh Lord, sighed Kurt. What's the matter? The Rubens are at it again, swinging on our garden gate. They stood there, apparently in heated conversation. Kurt waved and shouted, hello. Mrs. Ruben turned and waved, though somewhat dubiously. Ruben turned heavily and stalked off across the garden and out of sight. The arches of Tony's eyebrows went suddenly gothic. Something's up. Yes, something's always up with those two. They used to keep me awake night, screaming at each other. Watch your step, Tony, for heaven's sake. When they opened the blue door that led into the garden, they found Mrs. Ruben sitting on the steps of the low terrace, moodily poking with the twig, at a snail which had clung to the damp coping beside her. She was young, twenty-six perhaps, fully twenty years younger than her husband, small and dark with a thin face, thin lips and nose, and enormous black eyes, half concealed behind heavy rimmed glasses. Kurt disliked her, had from the first. She always reminded him of a rat, pushing its way into places from which one tried to exclude it. She had been a social worker of some sort in New York, had met Ruben there and married him. Why, Kurt could never conceive, for they were glaringly unsuited to each other in age and in temperament. Ruben gruff, selfish, crude, grossly conceited, yet possessing a real talent for paint. Georgia, moody, introspective, prying, as selfish as her husband, and utterly inefficient as cook or housekeeper, constantly at loose ends with her husband's personality, and yet passionately proud of his achievements, and reveling, as a gourmand might in a choice store of food, in his celebrated friends. We were up at the Harris's last night, and Frank was telling Leo, or were half expecting Sherwood Anderson down next week from Paris, or Norman Douglas is up at Mentone again, and we may drive down to see him one of these days. These were typical of her most frequent conversational overtures. This morning she was gloomily silent. Cheerio, fair lady, how's tricks? said Tony. Oh, shut up, you make me sick. All you men make me sick, especially if you're artists. Well, that lets us out at least, put in Kurt. It doesn't let you out, you're artistic, and that's worse. My God, I thought when I was in Henry Street that I ran up against queer people. But this has me beat. Her rage seemed too great to empty itself exclusively upon its real object, her husband, and spilled over into these two as well. Somebody's done wrong by our knell, Tony contributed. Because I can't cook a steak the way he likes it, and because I won't wash out his goddamn brushes three times a day, he calls me a slut and nearly has a stroke. He will some day. Oh, snap out of it, Georgia. Your lot's not so bad. No. Her voice was brittle with vindictiveness. She rose and started to the upper house, her face tense with emotion. Then, half turning, she threw out. Some of us can have wives to our taste, apparently, and disappeared through the door. Kurt and Tony stared at each other, amazed. That dirty winch, exclaimed Tony. What's she driving at? asked Kurt. It's clear enough what she's driving at, at you and me. She's been prying, apparently. I think we're going to move. Oh, she couldn't. How could she? Anyway, it's Ruben she's sore at. When she gets over that, she'll forget this other, too. Don't you think it, Kurt? She's a vindictive, mean little rat. Kurt approved the epithet. And she's out to do me no good. And if in the doing she slashes you a bit, it's all right with her. I know these people. They praise themselves for being broad-minded, but they're really intolerant as hell, and they can make us damned uncomfortable. Let's not even give them the chance. That afternoon they walked by the Valley Road to St. Paul, growing up out of the Green Valley in a surprising ridge of compact stone. Smaller than Severne, its charm was different. The old Roman wall was damaged so little that they found they could walk almost the whole circuit of the town on its crumbling top. The one long street that ran through the town along the spine of the hill was flanked closely on either side by the heavy stone facades of old houses, with graded windows and enormous studded doors, forbidding and secret. Here and there, however, one of them would stand open, giving a glimpse through the long-tiled hallways to open arches, looking westward over the steeply dropping hillside, with the vivid tops of orange trees and small walled gardens, a picture of freshly drawn water from the central fountain, or the crab-like back of some old woman scrubbing a doorstep, as if to show that life for her was frugal, clean, and sufficient. Tony was frankly excited at these few accidental glimpses of an intimate and different world. Who'd ever think it, he exclaimed, seizing Kurt's arm. It's here where we should live, not among those splotches and dabblers in Severne. It's like us, at least just like you, Kurt, hiding your real and important life behind a wall as non-committal as this. Kurt smiled. You're talking exactly as I talked the other night, Tony. You're not being very consistent or logical. Logical? Of course I'm not logical. Who could be with all this about you? He swept his free hand in an inclusive gesture. I'm not saying you were wrong, all wrong. It's things like this damned Ruben nastiness that make your ideas seem right, really. He stopped and planted his back against a convenient wall. They think we're nasty, but it's they always who are nasty. Nasty and sneaking and suspicious and even jealous. That's it. She's jealous. It's the idea of Ruben, bull-necked old Ruben, not really satisfying her, and two young men she'd like to have falling over themselves to seduce her, not carrying a dam about her. Kurt was surprised at the depth of Tony's feeling on the subject. He would have expected him to be scornful, perhaps, humorously and lightly malicious, but this fragile head pressed back against the old wall, this tense throat, these nervous hands, displayed a new and unfamiliar seriousness. "'Come along,' said Kurt, tugging at his jacket. "'Come along.' They turned a slight bend in the street and came upon the square, which was really little more than an angular widening of the street to accommodate a low-circular fountain, and beyond it a stone arcade, beneath which, sunken slightly below the level of the street, was a series of long troughs, the village laundry. At the fountain the street divided into a thin V, continuing on the right up a gradual rise of the hill to the heavy Romanesque church at its summit, and on the left descending slightly between rows of the same solid houses. They took the left fork, and before they had passed a fountain Tony stopped. "'This is it,' he said. "'This is what? This is where we're moving to.' There was, Kurt then observed, beside the tall car of doors that provided the only relief in the wall outside the fountain, a small sign, apartment to rent. "'Don't you feel that it's right? It is, I know it is.' And before Kurt could reply, he had lifted the iron knocker and sent its dull thunder echoing through the house. Tony's premonition was right. That night they sat reviewing their find, its square dark living room with red-tiled floor, great oaken cupboard and hooded fireplace, the bedrooms, high ceilinged and looking down an olive grown hillside and across a valley, its small kitchen with charcoal oven and copper kettles, its garden overlooking the same hillside and valley in three terraces, with pots of angular flaming geraniums and orange trees gold-globed with fruit. And most of all, it's Stephen Dedalus, the small, mongrel puppy with floppy ears and sad eyes, that, whining at the door during their inspection, had so won them that Tony had at once adopted it and christened it for Joyce's strange hero. They were deep in their planning when Reuben came in, with no more warning than a surly grunt. His face was red, and his peacock-green tie, which he always affected on his trips to niece or can, was a rye. He was drunk. See here, fellows! His voice was thick, and he rubbed his knuckles against his coarse, almost negroid hair. I'm sorry, but I gotta use this room, and I guess Georgia thinks she doesn't want any one up at the house any more. This to Tony. He stared with a sort of ox-like and smoldering malice at Tony's bright head. Kurt started to speak, but a look, a something passing like a spark from Tony's mind to his own, made him stop. I'm sorry, Reuben began again, a little disappointed that his victims did not seem more perturbed. But this time Tony interrupted, airily. Oh, don't feel badly about it, Reuben. It's really quite a coincidence. You see, Gray and I just rented a place this afternoon up the valley, and we were just wondering how we would break the news. Reuben was too drunk to conceal his disgruntled surprise, but, but you're rinsed not up yet, hen. Oh, that's all right, retorted Tony. We won't ask you for a refund. We're going out tomorrow, as a matter of fact. Oh, Reuben grunted. Rubbed his chin, and, turning unsteadily, went out. Tony rose and flung the door completely open. To air the place out, he explained. Kurt continued to stroke the soft ears of Stephen, who sprawled by the low chair. Well, I was right, wasn't I? asked Tony, turning back into the room. Let's take a walk. Stephen needs the air, I'm sure, and God knows I do. End of Part 3, Chapter 2.