“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Owens. “I mean it’s not the sort of thing you ask—”
“I expect it’s a great deal,” said Mrs. Parsters.
Dr. Tuttlingen began to hop, first on one foot, then on the other. “Water in the ears,” he explained. He seemed happy. He sat down and pinched Heidemarie above the elbow. “As long as we don’t have to pay too much, eh?” he said.
“I don’t understand the ‘we,’ ” said Heidemarie, morose. “On July the eleventh, and again on July the thirteenth, and again this morning—”
“Ah,” said the Doctor, obviously enjoying this. “That was a joke. Do you think I would leave you all alone in Stuttgart, with all the Americans?”
From the top of the cliff came the quavering note of the luncheon gong at Villa Margate, followed by the clapper bell of the pension next door. On both sides of the pavilion there was a stir, like the wind.
“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Parsters, watching the beach colony leave like a file of ants. She looked moody. Mrs. Owens wondered why.
“Good-bye, everyone,” said Heidemarie. Her whole demeanor had changed; she looked at Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Parsters as if she felt sorry for them.
“Life—” began Mrs. Parsters. “Oh, the hell with it.” She said to Mrs. Owens, “And I expect that you, too, have some concrete plan?”
“Oh, dear, no,” said Mrs. Owens, distracted, beckoning to her child. “I’m just waiting here for my husband. He’s in Gibraltar on business. The fact is, you know, I’m not really divorced, or anything like that. I’m just waiting here. He’s going to pick me up.”
“I rather expected that,” said Mrs. Parsters, cheering up. One of her guesses, at least, had been nearly right. “Just so long as he doesn’t forget you, my dear.”
Waiters walked about, listless, collecting glasses, pocketing tips. Nothing moved between the pavilion and the sea. Mrs. Parsters, Bobby, Mrs. Owens, and her child plowed through sand on their way to the steps that led up from the beach.
WHEN WE WERE NEARLY YOUNG
In Madrid, nine years ago, we lived on the thought of money. Our friendships were nourished with talk of money we expected to have, and what we intended to do when it came. There were four of us — two men and two girls. The men, Pablo and Carlos, were cousins. Pilar was a relation of theirs. I was not Spanish and not a relation, and a friend almost by mistake. The thing we had in common was that we were all waiting for money.
Every day I went to the Central Post Office, and I made the rounds of the banks and the travel agencies, where letters and money could come. I was not certain how much it might be, or where it was going to arrive, but I saw it riding down a long arc like a rainbow. In those days I was always looking for signs. I saw signs in cigarette smoke, in the way ash fell, and in the cards. I laid the cards out three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday were no good, because the cards were mute or evasive; and on Sundays they lied. I thought these signs — the ash, the smoke, and so on — would tell me what direction my life was going to take and what might happen from now on. I had unbounded belief in free will, which most of the people I knew despised, but I was superstitious, too. I saw inside my eyelids at night the nine of clubs, which is an excellent card, and the ten of hearts, which is better, morally speaking, since it implies gain through effort. I saw the aces of clubs and diamonds, and the jack of diamonds, who is the postman. Although Pablo and Pilar and Carlos were not waiting for anything in particular — indeed, had nothing to wait for, except a fortune — they were anxious about the postman, and relieved when he turned up. They never supposed that the postman would not arrive, or that his coming might have no significance.
Carlos and Pablo came from a town outside Madrid. They had no near relatives in the city, and they shared a room in a flat on Calle Hortaleza. I lived in a room along the hall; that was how we came to know one another. Pilar, who was twenty-two, the youngest of the four of us, lived in a small flat on her own. She had been married to Carlos’s stepbrother at seventeen, and had been a widow three years. She was eager to marry again, but feared she was already too old. Carlos was twenty-nine, the oldest. Pablo and I came in between.
Carlos worked in a bank. His salary was so small that he could barely subsist on it, and he was everywhere in debt. Pablo studied law at the University of Madrid. When he had nothing to do, he went with me on my rounds. These rounds took up most of the day, and had become important, for, after a time, the fact of waiting became more valid than the thing I was waiting for. I knew that I would feel let down when the waiting was over. I went to the post office, to three or four banks, to Cook’s, and American Express. At each place, I stood and waited in a queue. I have never seen so many queues, or so many patient people. I also gave time and thought to selling my clothes. I sold them to the gypsies in the flea market. Once I got a dollar-fifty for a coat and a skirt, but it was stolen from my pocket when I stopped to buy a newspaper. I thought I had jostled the thief, and when I said “Sorry” he nodded his head and walked quickly away. He was a man of about thirty. I can still see his turned-up collar and the back of his head. When I put my hand in my pocket to pay for the paper, the money was gone. When I was not standing in queues or getting rid of clothes, I went to see Pilar. We sat out on her balcony when it was fine, and next to her kitchen stove when it was cold. We were not ashamed to go to the confectioner’s across the street and bargain in fractions of pennies for fifty grams of chocolate, which we scrupulously shared. Pilar was idle, but restful. Pablo was idle, but heavy about it. He was the most heavily idle person I have ever known. He was also the only one of us who had any money. His father sent him money for his room and his meals, and he had an extra allowance from his godfather, who owned a hotel on one of the coasts. Pablo was dark, curly-haired, and stocky, with the large head and opaque eyes you saw on the streets of Madrid. He was one of the New Spaniards — part of the first generation grown to maturity under Franco. He was the generation they were so proud of in the newspapers. But he must be — he is—well over thirty now, and no longer New. He had already calculated, with paper and pencil, what the future held, and decided it was worth only half a try.
We stood in endless queues together in banks, avoiding the bank where Carlos worked, because we were afraid of giggling and embarrassing him. We shelled peanuts and gossiped and held hands in the blank, amiable waiting state that had become the essence of life. When we had heard the ritual “No” everywhere, we went home.
Home was a dark, long flat filled with the sound of clocks and dripping faucets. It was a pension, of a sort, but secret. In order to escape paying taxes, the owners had never declared it to the police, and lived in perpetual dread. A girl had given me the address on a train, warning me to say nothing about it to anyone. There was one other foreign person — a crazy old Englishwoman. She never spoke a word to me and, I think, hated me on sight. But she did not like Spaniards any better; one could hear her saying so when she talked to herself. At first we were given meals, but after a time, because the proprietors were afraid about the licensing and the police, that stopped, and so we bought food and took it to Pilar’s, or cooked in my room on an alcohol stove. We ate rationed bread with lumps of flour under the crust, and horrible ersatz jam. We were always vaguely hungry. Our craving for sweet things was limitless; we bought cardboard pastries that seemed exquisite because of the lingering sugary taste they left in the mouth. Sometimes we went to a restaurant we called “the ten-peseta place” because you could get a three-course meal with wine and bread for ten pesetas — about twenty-three cents then. There was also the twelve-peseta place, where the smell was less nauseating, although the food was nearly as rank. The décor in both restaurants was distinctly un-European. The cheaper the restaurant, the more cheaply Oriental it became. I remember being served calves’ brains in an open skull.