They listened fascinated as the aria, drawing to a close, made the orthodox preparations for the inevitable high final note.
Presently Kit said: “Now that that’s over, I’ve got to have another bottle of Oulmes.”
“My God, more of that gas? You’ll take off.”
“I know, Tunner,” she said, “but I can’t get my mind off water. It doesn’t matter what I look at, it makes me thirsty. For once I feel as if I could get on the wagon and stay there. I can’t drink in the heat.”
“Another Pernod?” said Tunner to Port.
Kit frowned. “If it were real Pernod—”
“It’s not bad,” said Tunner, as the waiter set a bottle of mineral water on the table.
“Ce n’est pas du vrai Pernod?”
“Si, si, c’est du Pernod,” said the waiter.
“Let’s have another setup,” Port said. He stared at his glass dully. No one spoke as the waiter moved away. The soprano began another aria.
“She’s off!” cried Tunner. The din of a street car and its bell passing across the terrace outside, drowned the music for a moment. Beneath the awning they had a glimpse of the open vehicle in the sunshine as it rocked past. It was crowded with people in tattered clothes.
Port said: “I had a strange dream yesterday. I’ve been trying to remember it, and just this minute I did.”
“No!” cried Kit with force. “Dreams are so dull! Please!”
“You don’t want to hear it!” he laughed. “But I’m going to tell it to you anyway.” The last was said with a certain ferocity which on the surface appeared feigned, but as Kit looked at him she felt that on the contrary he actually was dissimulating the violence he felt. She did not say the withering things that were on the tip of her tongue.
“I’ll be quick about it,” he smiled. “I know you’re doing me a favor by listening, but I can’t remember it just thinking about it. It was daytime and I was on a train that kept putting on speed. I thought to myself. ‘We’re going to plough into a big bed with the sheets all in mountains.’”
Tunner said archly: “Consult Madame La Hiff’s Gypsy Dream Dictionary.”
“Shut up. And I was thinking that if I wanted to, I could live over again—start at the beginning and come right on up to the present, having exactly the same life, down to the smallest detail.”
Kit closed her eyes unhappily.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“I think it’s extremely thoughtless and egotistical of you to insist this way when you know how boring it is for us.”
“But I’m enjoying it so much.” He beamed. “And I’ll bet Tunner wants to hear it, anyway. Don’t you?”
Tunner smiled. “Dreams are my cup of tea. I know my La Hiff by heart.”
Kit opened one eye and looked at him. The drinks arrived.
“So I said to myself, ‘No! No!’ I couldn’t face the idea of all those God—awful fears and pains again, in detail. And then for no reason I looked out the window at the trees and heard myself say: ‘Yes!’ Because I knew I’d be willing to go through the whole thing again just to smell the spring the way it used to smell when I was a kid. But then I realized it was too late, because while I’d been thinking ‘No!’ I’d reached up and snapped off my incisors as if they’d been made of plaster. The train had stopped and I held my teeth in my hand, and I started to sob. You know those terrible dream sobs that shake you like an earthquake?”
Clumsily Kit rose from the table and walked to a door marked Dames. She was crying.
“Let her go,” said Port to Tunner, whose face showed concern. “She’s worn out. The heat gets her down.”
III
He sat up in bed reading, wearing only a pair of shorts. The door between their two rooms was open, and so were the windows. Over the town and harbor a lighthouse played its beam in a wide, slow circle, and above the desultory traffic an insistent electric bell shrilled without respite.
“Is that the movie next door?” called Kit.
“Must be,” he said absently, still reading.
“I wonder what they’re showing.”
“What?” He laid down his book. “Don’t tell me you’re interested in going!”
“No.” She sounded doubtful. “I just wondered.”
“I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a film in Arabic called Fiancee for Rent. That’s what it says under the title.”
“It’s unbelievable.”
“I know.”
She wandered into the room, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette, and walked about in a circle for a minute or so. He looked up.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She paused. “I’m just a little upset. I don’t think you should have told that dream in front of Tunner.”
He did not dare say: “Is that why you cried?” But he said: “In front of him! I told it to him, as much as to you. What’s a dream? Good God, don’t take everything so seriously! And why shouldn’t he hear it? What’s wrong with Tunner? We’ve known him for five years.”
“He’s such a gossip. You know that. I don’t trust him. He always makes a good story.”
“But who’s he going to gossip with here?” said Port, exasperated.
Kit in turn was annoyed.
“Oh, not here!” she snapped. “You seem to forget we’ll be back in New York some day.”
“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe, but I suppose we will. All right. What’s so awful if he remembers every detail and tells it to everybody we know?”
“It’s such a humiliating dream. Can’t you see?”
“Oh, crap!”
There was a silence.
“Humiliating to whom? You or me?”
She did not answer. He pursued: “What do you mean, you don’t trust Tunner? In what way?”
“Oh, I trust him, I suppose. But I’ve never felt completely at ease with him. I’ve never felt he was a close friend.”
“That’s nice, now that we’re here with him!”
“Oh, it’s all right. I like him very much. Don’t misunderstand.”
“But you must mean something.”
“Of course I mean something. But it’s not important.” She went back into her own room. He remained a moment, looking at the ceiling, a puzzled expression on his face.
He started to read again, and stopped.
“Sure you don’t want to see Fiancee for Rent?”
“I certainly don’t.”
He closed his book. “I think I’ll take a walk for about a half an hour.”
He rose, put on a sports shirt and a pair of seersucker trousers, and combed his hair. In her room, she was sitting by the open window, filing her nails. He bent over her and kissed the nape of her neck, where the silky blonde hair climbed upward in wavy furrows.
“That’s wonderful stuff you have on. Did you get it here?” He sniffed noisily, with appreciation. Then his voice changed when he said: “But what did you mean about Tunner?”
“Oh, Port! For God’s sake, stop talking about it!”
“All right, baby,” he said submissively, kissing her shoulder. And with an inflection of mock innocence: “Can’t I even think about it?”
She said nothing until he got to the door. Then she raised her head, and there was pique in her voice: “After all, it’s much more your business than it is mine.”
“See you soon,” he said.
IV
He walked through the streets, unthinkingly seeking the darker ones, glad to be alone and to feel the night air against his face. The streets were crowded. People pushed against him as they passed, stared from doorways and windows, made comments openly to each other about him—whether with sympathy or not he was unable to tell from their faces—and they sometimes ceased to walk merely in order to watch him.
“How friendly are they? Their faces are masks. They all look a thousand years old. What little energy they have is only the blind, mass desire to live, since no one of them eats enough to give him his own personal force. But what do they think of me? Probably nothing. Would one of them help me if I were to have an accident? Or would I lie here in the street until the police found me? What motive could any one of them have for helping me? They have no religion left. Are they Moslems or Christians? They don’t know. They know money, and when they get it, all they want is to eat. But what’s wrong with that? Why do I feel this way about them? Guilt at being well fed and healthy among them? But suffering is equally divided among all men; each has the same amount to undergo Emotionally he felt that this last idea was untrue, but at the moment it was a necessary belief. it is not always easy to support the stares of hungry people. Thinking that way he could walk on through the streets. It was as if either he or they did not exist. Both suppositions were possible. The Spanish maid at the hotel had said to him that noon: “La vida es pena.” “Of course,” he had replied, feeling false even as he spoke, asking himself if any American can truthfully accept a definition of life which makes it synonymous with suffering. But at the moment he had approved her sentiment because she was old, withered, so clearly of the people. For years it had been one of his superstitions that reality and true perception were to be found in the conversation of the laboring classes. Even though now he saw clearly that their formulas of thought and speech are as strict and as patterned, and thus as far removed from any profound expression of truth as those of any other class, often he found himself still in the act of waiting, with the unreasoning belief that gems of wisdom might yet issue from their mouths. As he walked along, his nervousness was made manifest to him by the sudden consciousness that he was repeatedly tracing rapid figure—eights with his right index finger. He sighed and made himself stop doing it.