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 … God-damn 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 wave length, and tripped up the stairs. Broadway. Same old Broadway, same old Neon hell’s a-fire. 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. To-morrow 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 coffee house 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 any one 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 emigrated to Cuba as a young man. Like others of his race, he was grave, almost sombre, in appearance. But the moment he smiled one detected the child-like heart. His thick guttural accent made his words thrum. Physically he bore a strong resemblance to Casals. He was profoundly serious, but not deadly serious, as they had given me to believe.
Observing him bent over his sewing, I recalled the speech Mona had once made about him. Particularly those words he had spoken so quietly: I will kill you one day.
He was indeed a man capable of doing such a thing. Strangely enough, my feeling was that anything Ricardo might decide to do would be entirely justifiable. To kill, in his case, could not be called a crime; it would be an act of justice. The man was incapable of doing an impure thing. He was a man of heart, all heart, indeed.
At intervals he sipped the tea which they had poured for him. Had it been firewater he would have sipped it in the same calm, tranquil way, I thought. It was a ritual he was observing. Even his way of talking gave the impression of being part of a ritual.
In Spain he had been a musician and a poet; in Cuba he had become a cobbler. Here he was nobody. However, to be a nobody suited him perfectly. He was nobody and everybody. Nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. Fully accomplished, like a rock.
Homely as sin he was, but from every pore of his being there radiated only kindness, mercy and forbearance. And this was the man to whom they imagined they were doing a great favor! How little they suspected the man’s keen understanding! Impossible for them to believe that, knowing all, he could still give nothing but affection. Or, that he expected nothing more of Mona than the privilege of further inflaming his mad passion.
One day, he says quietly, I will marry you. Then all this will be like a dream.
Slowly he raises his eyes, first to Mona, then to Stasia, then to me. As if to say—You have heard me.
What a lucky man, he says, fixing me with his steady, kindly gaze. ‘What a lucky man you are to enjoy the friendship of these two. I have not yet been admitted to the inner circle.
Then, veering to Mona, he says: You will soon tire of being forever mysterious. It is like standing before the mirror all day. I see you from behind the mirror. The mystery is not in what you do but in what you are. When I take you out of this morbid life you will be naked as a statue. Now your beauty
