The Young Lions Part 2

After breakfast Margaret packed, and told Mrs. Langerman that she and her friend had to leave. Mrs. Langerman clucked and said, "What a shame!" and presented the bill.

There was-an item on the bill of nine schillings.

"I don't understand this," Margaret said. She was standing at the s.h.i.+ny oak desk in the lobby as she pointed out the neatly inked entry on the bill. Mrs. Langerman, bobbing, starched and brilliantly scrubbed, behind the desk, ducked her head and peered near-sightedly at the piece of paper.

"Oh." She looked up and stared without expression at Margaret. "Oh, that's for the torn sheets, Liebchen."

Margaret paid. Frederick was helping with her bags. She tipped him. He bowed as he helped her into the cab and said, "I hope you have enjoyed your visit."

Margaret and Joseph checked their bags at the station and walked around, looking at the shops until it was time to get their train.

As the train pulled out she thought she saw Diestl, graceful and dark, at the end of the platform, watching. She waved, but the figure didn't wave back. Somehow, though, she felt it would be like him to come down to the station and, without even greeting her, watch her go off with Joseph.

The inn Diestl had recommended was small and pretty, and the people charming. It snowed two of the three nights and there was fresh cover on the trails in the morning. Joseph had never been gayer or more delightful. Margaret slept secure and warm, with his arms around her all night, in the huge featherbed that seemed to have been made for mountain honeymoons. They didn't talk about anything serious, and they didn't mention marriage again. The sun shone in the clear sky over the peaks all day long, every day, and the air was winey and intoxicating in the lungs. Joseph sang Schubert lieder for the other guests in front of the fire at night, his voice sweet and searching. There was a smell of cinnamon always in the house. Both of them were burned a deep brown, and even so, more freckles than ever before came out on her nose, and Margaret nearly wept when she went down to the station on the fourth day because they had to get to Vienna. The holiday was over.

CHAPTER TWO.

IN NEW YORK CITY, too, the s.h.i.+ning new year of 1938 was being welcomed. The taxicabs were b.u.mper to b.u.mper in the wet streets, their horns swelling and roaring, as though they were all some newly invented species of tin-and-gla.s.s animal, penned in the dark stone and concrete. In the middle of the city, trapped in the glare of the advertising signs, like prisoners caught by the warden's floodlights in the moment of attempted flight, a million people, clamped together, rolled slowly and aimlessly, in pale tides uptown and downtown. The electric sign that jittered nervously around the Times Building announced to the merrymakers below that a storm had destroyed seven lives in the Midwest, that Madrid had been sh.e.l.led twelve times at the turn of the year, which conveniently for the readers of the Times, came several hours earlier to Madrid than it did to the city of New York.

The police, to whom the New Year could only mean more burglary, further rape, increasing death in traffic, added heat and snow, put on a show of bluff jollity at the street corners, but their eyes were cynical and weary as they herded the celebrating animals up one side of the Square and down the other.

The celebrants themselves, pus.h.i.+ng lava-like and inexorable through the paper slush underfoot, threw confetti at each other, laden with the million germs of the city's streets, blew horns to tell the world that they were happy and unafraid, shouted hoa.r.s.e greetings with thin good nature that would not last till morning. They had come from the fogs of England for this, the green mists of Ireland, the sand hills of Syria and Iraq, from the pogrom-haunted ghettoes of Poland and Russia, from the vineyards of Italy and the cod banks of Norway, and from every other island, city, and continent on the face of the earth. Later, they had come from Brooklyn and the Bronx, and East St. Louis and Texarkana, and from towns called Bimiji and Jaffrey and Spirit, and they all looked as though they had never had enough sun or enough sleep; they all looked as though their clothes had originally been bought for other people; they all looked as though they had been thrown into this cold, asphalt cage for someone else's holiday, not their own; they all looked as though deep in their bones they understood that winter would last forever, and that, despite the horns and the laughter and the shuffling, religious promenade, they knew that 1938 would be worse than the year before it.

Pickpockets, wh.o.r.es, gamblers, pimps, confidence men, taxi-drivers, bartenders and hotel owners did well, as did the producers of plays and champagne salesmen, beggars and nightclub doormen. Here and there could be heard the cras.h.i.+ng of gla.s.s, as whiskey bottles were hurled out of hotel windows into the narrow areaways which provided light and air and a view of the world to the two-dollar rooms, five dollars for tonight, in which the old year was being discarded in transient merriment. A girl's throat was cut on 50th Street and an ambulance's siren made a brief peremptory contribution to the general celebration. From partly opened windows, yellow and bright, on the quieter streets, came the soprano, desert laughter, of women, the Sat.u.r.day-night and holiday-evening voice of the city, which, rasping and over-amused, somehow can only be heard in the dark, toward the cold hours of morning.

Later on, in the ageless January air underground, dank and flickering in the enclosed dark roar of the suburban subway trains, the crowd, by then compartmentalized, swaying and grimy-eyed, silent and bruised by sleep, smelling of street-corner gardenias, garlic, onion, sweat, shoe polish, perfumes and labor, would flee to their lurking homes. But now they flowed up and down the bright streets, making noise with horns and rattles and tin whistles, irresistibly and steadfastly celebrating, because, for lack of a better reason, as the new year came in, they had proof that they had at least survived the old year and were alive for the next.

Michael Whitacre pushed his way through the crowds. He felt himself smiling mechanically and hypocritically at people as they jostled him. He was late, and he couldn't get a taxi, and he hadn't been able to avoid staying and having some drinks in one of the dressing rooms. The hurried gulping had left his head buzzing and his stomach burning.

The theatre had been wild. There had been a noisy, disinterested audience and an understudy had filled in the grandmother's part because Patricia Ferry had shown up too drunk to go on, and Michael had had a trying night keeping everything going. He was the stage manager for Late Spring and it had a cast of thirty-seven, with three children who always got colds, and five sets that had to be changed in twenty seconds. At the end of a night like this all he wanted to do was go home and sleep. But there was this d.a.m.ned party over on 67th Street, and Laura was there. Anyway, n.o.body ever just went to sleep on New Year's Eve.

He pushed through the worst of the crowd and walked briskly to Fifth Avenue and turned north. Fifth Avenue was less crowded and the air whipped down from the Park, lively and invigorating. The sky here was dark enough over the looming buildings so that he actually could see stars, pale and small, in the thin corridor of heaven visible over the street.

I must get a home in the country, he thought as he walked briskly, his shoes making a soft tapping on the cement, a little inexpensive place not far from the city, six, seven thousand, maybe, you could swing a loan, where I can get away for a few days at a time, where it's quiet and you can see all the stars at night and where you can go to sleep at eight o'clock when you feel like it. I must do it, he thought, I musn't just think about it.

He got a glimpse of himself in a dimly lit shop window. He looked shadowy and unreal in the reflection, but, as usual, he was annoyed with what he saw. Self-consciously, he straightened his shoulders. I must remember not to slouch, he thought, and I must lose fifteen pounds. I look like a fat grocer.

He refused a taxi that stopped next to him, as he crossed at a corner. Exercise, he thought, and no drinking for at least a month. That's what does it. The drinking. Beer, martinis, have another. And the way your head felt in the morning. You weren't good for anything until noon and by that time you were out to lunch and there you were with a gla.s.s in your hand again. This was the beginning of a new year, a wonderful time to go on the wagon. It would be a good test of character. Tonight, at the party. Un.o.btrusively. Just not drinking. And in the house in the country no liquor closet at all. He felt much better now, resolved and powerful, although his dress trousers still felt uncomfortably tight as he strode past the rich windows toward 67th Street.

When he came into the crowded room, it was just past twelve. People were singing and embracing and that girl who pa.s.sed out at all the parties was doing it again in the corner. Whitacre saw his wife in the crowd kissing a little man who looked like Hollywood. Somebody put a drink in his hand and a tall girl spilled some potato salad on his shoulder and said, "Excellent salad." She brushed vaguely at his lapel with a long, exquisite hand with crimson nails an inch and a half in length. Katherine came over with enough bosom showing to power a frigate in a mild breeze and said, "Mike, darling." She kissed him behind the ear, and said, "What are you doing tonight?" Michael said, "My wife arrived yesterday from the Coast." And Katherine said, "Ooops! Sorry. Happy New Year," and wandered off, her bosom dazzling three Harvard juniors with crew haircuts and white ties, who were related to the hostess and who were in town for the holiday.

Michael lifted his gla.s.s and drank half of its contents. It seemed to be Scotch into which someone had poured lemon soda. Tomorrow, he thought, will be time enough for the wagon. After all, he had had three already, so this night was lost anyhow. Michael waited until he saw his wife finish kissing the bald little man, who wore a swooping Russian cavalryman's moustache.

Michael made his way across the room and came up behind his wife. She was holding the little man's hand, and saying, "Don't tell anyone, Harry, but the script stinks."

"You know me, Laura," the bald man said. "Do I ever tell anyone?"

"Happy New Year, darling," Michael kissed Laura's cheek.

Laura turned around, still holding the bald man's hand. She smiled. Even with the din of celebration all around her, and the drunks and commotion, there was that tenderness and melting, lovely welcome that always surprised and shook Michael, no matter how many times he saw it. She put up her free arm and drew Michael closer to her to kiss him. There was a single, hesitating moment when his cheek was next to hers, before she kissed him, when he could sense her sniffing inquisitively. He felt himself grow stolid and sullen, even as they kissed. She always does it, he thought. New Year, old year, makes no difference.

"I doused myself, before leaving the theatre," he said, pulling away and standing straight, "with two bottles of Chanel Number 5."

He saw Laura's eyelids quiver a little, hurt. "Don't be mean to me," she said, "in 1938. Why're you so late?"

"I stopped and had a couple."

"With whom?" The suspicious, pinched look that always came over Laura's face when she questioned him, corrupted its usual delicate, candid expression.

"Some of the boys," he said.

"That's all?" Her voice was light and playful, in the accepted tone in which you quizzed your husband in public in her circle.

"No," said Michael. "I forgot to tell you. There were six Polynesian dancing girls with walnuts in their navels, but we left them at the Stork."

"Isn't he funny?" Laura said to the bald man. "Isn't he terribly funny?"

"This is getting domestic," the bald man said. "This is when I leave. When it gets domestic." He waved his fingers at the Whitacres. "Love you, Laura, darling," he said, and burrowed into the crowd.

"I have a great idea," Laura said. "Let's not be mean to wives tonight."

Michael drained his drink, and put the gla.s.s down. "Who's the moustache?" he asked.

"Oh, Harry?"

"The one you were kissing."

"Harry. I've known him for years. He's always at parties." Laura touched her hair tenderly. "Here. On the Coast. I don't know what he does. Maybe he's an agent. He came over and said he thought I was enchanting in my last picture."

"Did he really say enchanting?"

"Uhuh."

"Is that how they talk in Hollywood these days?"

"I guess so." She was smiling at him, but her eyes flicked back and forth, looking over the room, as they always did everywhere but in their own home. "How did you think I was in my last picture?"

"Enchanting," Michael said. "Let's get a drink."

Laura stood up and took his arm and rubbed her cheek softly against his shoulder and said, "Glad I'm here?" and Michael grinned and said, "Enchanted." They both chuckled as they went toward the bar, side by side, through the ma.s.s of people in the center of the room.

The bar was in the next room, under an abstract painting of what was probably a woman with three magenta b.r.e.a.s.t.s, seated on a parallelogram.

Wallace Arney was there, graying and puffy, holding a teacup in his hand. He was flanked by a squat, powerful man in a blue-serge suit who looked as though he had been out in the weather for ten winters in a row. There were two girls, with flat, pretty faces and models' bony ungirdled hips, who were drinking whiskey straight.

"Did he make a pa.s.s at you?" Michael heard one of the girls saying as he came up.

"No," the other girl said, shaking her sleek, blonde hair.

"Why not?" the first girl asked.

"At the moment," the blonde girl said, "he's a. Yogi."

Both girls stared reflectively at their gla.s.ses, then drained them and walked off together, stately and graceful as two panthers in the jungle.

"Did you hear that?" Michael asked Laura.

"Yes." Laura was laughing.

Michael asked the man behind the bar for two Scotches and smiled at Arney, who was the author of Late Spring. Arney merely continued to stare directly ahead of him, saying nothing, from time to time lifting the teacup to his lips, in an elegant, shaky gesture.

"Out," said the man in the blue-serge suit. "Out on his feet. The referee ought to stop the bout to spare him further punishment."

Arney looked around him, grinning and furtive, and pushed his teacup and saucer toward the man behind the bar. "Please," he said, "more tea."

The bartender filled his cup with rye and Arney peered around him once more before accepting it. "h.e.l.lo, Whitacre," he said. "Mrs. Whitacre. You won't tell Felice, will you?"

"No, Wallace," Michael said. "I won't tell."

"Thank G.o.d," Arney said, "Felice has indigestion. She's been in the john for an hour. She won't let me have even a beer." His voice, hoa.r.s.e and whiskey-riddled, wavered in self-pity. "Not even a beer. Can you imagine that? That's why I carry a teacup. From a distance of three feet, who can tell the difference? After all," he said defiantly, sipping from the cup, "I'm a grown man. She wants me to write another play." Now he was aggrieved. "Just because she's the wife of my producer she feels she has a right to throw a gla.s.s right out of my hand. Humiliating. A man my age should not be humiliated like that." He turned vaguely to the man in the blue-serge suit. "Mr. Parrish here drinks like a fish and n.o.body humiliates him. Everybody says, isn't it touching how Felice devotes herself to that drunken Wallace Arney? It doesn't touch me. Mr. Parrish and I know why she does it. Don't we, Mr. Parrish?"

"Sure, Pal," said the man in the blue suit.

"Economics. Like everything else." Arney waved his cup suddenly, splas.h.i.+ng whiskey on Michael's sleeve. "Mr. Parrish is a Communist and he knows. The basis of all human action. Greed. Naked greed. If they didn't think they could get another play out of me, they wouldn't care if I lived in a distillery. I could bathe in tequila and absinthe and they'd say, 'Kiss my a.s.s, Wallace Arney.' I beg your pardon, Mrs. Whitacre."

"That's all right," Laura said.

"Your wife is very pretty," Arney said. "Very pretty indeed. I've heard her spoken of here tonight in glowing terms." He leered at Michael knowingly. "Glowing terms. She has several old friends among the a.s.sembled guests here tonight. Haven't you, Mrs. Whitacre?"

"Yes," said Laura.

"Everybody has several old friends among the a.s.sembled guests," Arney said. "That's the way parties are these days. Modern society. A nest of snakes, hibernating for the winter, everybody wrapped around everybody else. Maybe that'll be the theme of my next play. Except I won't write it." He drank deeply. "Marvelous tea. Don't tell Felice." Michael took Laura's arm and started to leave. "Don't go, Whitacre," Arney said. "I know I'm boring you, but don't go. I want to talk to you. What do you want to talk about? Want to talk about Art?"

"Some other time," Michael said.

"I understand you're a very serious young man," Arney said doggedly. "Let's talk about Art. How did my play go tonight?"

"All right," said Michael.

"No," said Arney, "I won't talk about my play. I said Art and I know what you think of my play. Everybody in New York knows what you think about my play. You shoot your mouth off too G.o.dd.a.m.n much and if it was up to me I'd fire you. I am being friendly at the moment, but I'd fire you."

"You're drunk, Wally," Michael said.

"I am not profound enough for you," Arney said, his pale-blue eyes watering, his lower lip, full and wet, quivering as he spoke. "Reach my age, Whitacre, and you try to be profound."

"I'm sure Michael likes your play very much," Laura said in a clear, soothing voice.

"You're a very pretty girl, Mrs. Whitacre," Arney said, "and you have many friends, but please keep your trap shut at the moment."

"Why don't you go lie down somewhere?" Michael said.

"Let's not get off the subject." Arney turned hazily and belligerently back to Michael. "I know what you go around saying at parties. 'Arney is a silly old has-been. Arney writes about people who vanished in 1929 in a style that vanished in 1829.' It isn't even very funny. I have plenty of critics. Why do I have to pay them out of my own money? I don't like young snots like you, Whitacre. You're not even young enough to be so snotty."

"Listen, Pal ..." the man in the blue-serge suit began.

"You talk to him," Amey said to Parrish. "He's a Communist, too. That's why I'm not profound enough for him. All you have to do to be profound these days is pay fifteen cents a week for the New Ma.s.ses." He put his arm around Parrish lovingly. "This is the kind of Communist I like, Whitacre," he said. "Mr. Parrish. Mr. Sunburned Parrish. He got sunburned in sunny Spain. He went to Spain and he got shot at in Madrid and he's going back to Spain and he's going to get killed there. Aren't you, Mr. Parrish?"

"Sure, Pal," Parrish said.

"That's the kind of Communist I like," Arney said loudly. "Mr. Parrish is here to get some money and some volunteers to go back and get shot with him in sunny Spain. Instead of being so G.o.dd.a.m.n profound at these fairy parties in New York, Whitacre, why don't you go be profound in Spain with Mr. Parrish?"

"If you don't keep quiet," Michael started to say, but a tall, white-haired woman with a regal, dark face swept between him and Arney and calmly and without a word knocked the teacup out of Arney's hand. It broke on the floor in a small, china tinkle. Arney looked at her angrily for a moment, then grinned sheepishly, ducking his head, looking s.h.i.+ftily at the floor. "h.e.l.lo, Felice," he said.

"Get away from the bar," Felice said.

"Just drinking a little tea," Arney said. He turned and shuffled off, fat and aging, his gray hair lank and sweating against his large head.

"Mr. Arney does not drink," Felice said to the bartender.

"Yes, Ma'am," said the bartender.

"Christ," said Felice to Michael, "I could kill him. He's driving me crazy. And fundamentally he's such a sweet man."

"A darling man," Michael said.

"Was he awful?" Felice asked anxiously.

"Darling," Michael said.

"n.o.body'll invite him any place any more and everyone ducks him ..." Felice said.

"I can't imagine why," said Michael.

"Even so," said Felice sadly, "it's awful for him. He sits in his room brooding, telling everyone who'll listen to him that he's a has-been. I thought this would be good for him and I could keep an eye on him." She shrugged, looking after Arney's rumpled, retreating figure. "Some men ought to have their hands cut off at the wrist when they reach for their first drink." She picked up her skirts in a courtly, old-fas.h.i.+oned gesture, and went off after the playwright in a rustle of taffeta.

"I think," Michael said, "I could stand a drink."

"Me, too," said Laufa.

"Pal," said Mr. Parrish.

They stood silently at the bar, watching the bartender fill their gla.s.ses.