wall paintings, the dialogues in the dark with my other self, and so on. Nothing could surprise me any more, not even the arrival of an ambulance. Someone, Curley most likely, had thought up that idea to rid me of Stasia. Fortunately I was alone when the ambulance pulled up. There was no crazy person at this address, I informed the driver. He seemed disappointed. Someone had telephoned to come and get her. A mistake, I said.
Now and then the two Dutch sisters who owned the building would drop in to see if all was well. Never stayed but a minute or two. I never saw them except unkempt and bedraggled. The one sister wore blue stockings and the other pink and white striped stockings. The stripes ran spirally, like on a barber’s pole.
But about The Captive . . . I went to see the play on my own, without letting them know. A week later they went to see it, returning with violets and full of song. This time it was—“Just a Kiss in the Dark.”
Then one evening—how did it ever happen?—the three of us went to eat in a Greek restaurant. There they spilled the beans, about The Captive, what a wonderful play it was and how I ought to see it some time, maybe it would enlarge my ideas. “But I have seen it!” I said. “I saw it a week ago.” Whereupon a discussion began as to the merits of the play, capped by a battle royal because I failed to see eye to eye with them, because I interpreted everything in a prosaic, vulgar way. In the midst of the argument I produced the letter filched from the little casket. Far from being crestfallen or humiliated, they sailed into me with such venom, raised such a howl and stink, that soon the whole restaurant was in an uproar and we were asked, none too politely, to leave.
As if to make amends, the following day Mona suggested that I take her out some night, without Stasia. I demurred at first but she kept insisting. I thought probably she had a reason of her own, one which would be disclosed at the proper time, and so I agreed. We were to do it the night after next.
The evening came but, just as we were about to leave, she grew irresolute. True, I had been ragging her about her appearance—the lip rouge, the green eyelids, the white powdered cheeks, the cape that trailed the ground, the skirt that came just to her knees, and above all, the puppet, that leering, degenerate-looking Count Bruga, which she was hugging to her bosom and which she meant to take along.
“No,” I said, “not that, by God!”
“Why?”
“Because . . . Goddamn it, no!”
She handed the Count to Stasia, removed her cape, and sat down to think it over. Experience told me that that was the end of our evening. To my surprise, however, Stasia now came over, put both arms around us—just like a great big sister— and begged us not to quarrel. “Go!” she said. “Go and enjoy yourselves! I’ll clean house while you’re gone.” She fairly pushed us out, and as we marched off she kept shouting—“Have a good time! Enjoy yourselves!”
It was a lame start but we had decided to go through with it. As we hastened our steps—why? where were we rushing?—I felt as if I would explode. But I couldn’t get a word out, I was tongue-tied. Here we were, rushing along arm in arm “to enjoy ourselves,” but nothing definite had been planned. Were we just taking the air?
Presently I realized that we were headed for the subway. We entered, waited for a train, got in, sat down. Not a word as yet had passed between us. At Times Square we rose, like robots tuned to the same wavelength, and tripped up the stairs. Broadway. Same old Broadway, same old neon hell’s afire. Instinctively we headed north. People stopped in their tracks to stare at us. We pretended not to notice.
Finally we arrived in front of Chin Lee’s. “Shall we go up?” she asked. I nodded. She walks straight to the booth we had occupied that first night—a thousand years ago.
The moment the food is served her tongue loosens. Everything floods back: the food we ate, the way we faced each other, the airs we listened to, the things we said to one another. . . . Not a detail overlooked.
As one recollection followed another we grew more and more sentimental. “Falling in love again . . . never wanted to . . . what am I to do. . . .?” It was as if nothing had happened in between—no Stasia, no cellar life, no misunderstandings. Just we two, a pair of shoulder birds, with life everlasting.
A full dress rehearsal, that’s what it was. Tomorrow we would play our parts—to a packed house.
Were I asked which was the true reality, this dream of love, this lullaby, or the copper-plated drama which inspired it, I would have said—“This. This is it!”
Dream and reality—are they not interchangeable?
Beyond ourselves, we gave our tongues free rein, looked at one another with new eyes, more hungry, greedy eyes than ever before, believing, promising, as if it were our last hour on earth. We had found one another at last, we understood one another, and we would love one another forever and ever.
Still dewy, still reeling from the fumes of bliss, we left arm in arm and started wandering through the streets. No one stopped to look at us.
In a Brazilian coffeehouse we sat down again and resumed the duologue. Here the current showed signs of fluctuating. Now came halting admissions tinged with guilt and remorse. All that she had done, and she had done worse things than I imagined, had been done through fear of losing my love. Simpleton that I was, I insisted that she was exaggerating, I begged her to forget the past, declared it was of no importance whether true or false, real or imagined. I swore that there could never be anyone but her.
The table at which we were seated was shaped like a heart. It was to this onyx heart that we addressed our vows of everlasting fealty.
Finally I could stand no more of it. I had heard too much. “Let’s go,” I begged.
We rolled home in a cab, too exhausted to exchange another word.
We walked in on a scene transformed. Everything was in order, polished, gleaming. The table was laid for three. In the very center of the table stood a huge vase from which an enormous bouquet of violets sprouted.
All would have been perfect had it not been for the violets. Their presence seemed to outweigh all the words which had passed between us. Eloquent and irrefutable was their silent language. Without so much as parting their lips they made it clear to us that love is something which must be shared. “Love me as I love you.” That was the message.
Christmas was drawing nigh and in deference to the spirit of the season, they decided to invite Ricardo for a visit. He had been begging permission for this privilege for months; how they had managed to put off such a persistent suitor so long was beyond me.
Since they had often mentioned my name to Ricardo—I was their eccentric writer friend, perhaps a genius!—it was arranged that I should pop in soon after he arrived. There was a double purpose in this strategy, but the principal idea was to make sure that Ricardo left when they left.
I arrived to find Ricardo mending a skirt. The atmosphere was that of a Vermeer. Or a Saturday Evening Post cover depicting the activity of the Ladies’ Home Auxiliary.
I liked Ricardo immediately. He was all they said of him plus something beyond reach of their antennae. We began talking at once as if we had been friends all our lives. Or brothers. They had said he was Cuban, but I soon discovered that he was a Catalonian who had migrated to Cuba as a young man. Like others of his race, he was grave, almost somber, in appearance. But the moment he smiled one detected the childlike heart. His thick guttural accent made his words thrum. Physically he bore
