I got up and took her in my arms but she pushed me away-not angrily-and said: "Please don't, please don't. I don't feel like that tonight. I've been feeling terribly all day and the bourbon has picked me up but I still don't feel like that. Tell me all about yourself."
"I'm a bastard," I said.
"Oh, really. I've never known any bastards. What does it feel like?"
"Mostly lousy, I guess. I mean I would have enjoyed a set of parents."
"Well parents can be dreadful, of course, but I suppose dreadful parents are better than none at all. Mine were dreadful." She dropped a lighted cigarette into her lap but retrieved it before it burned the cloth of her skirt.
"Are your parents still living?"
"Yes, they're in Washington, they're very old." She sighed and stood. "Well if I'm going to Havenswood," she said, "I guess I'd better go." Now she was unsteady. She splashed a little whiskey into her glass and drank it without ice or water.
"Why do you go to Havenswood," I asked. "Why don't you telephone and say there's a fog on the turnpike or that you've got a cold or something."
"You don't understand," she said hoarsely. "It's one of those parties you have to go to like birthdays and weddings."
"I think it would be better if you didn't go."
"Why?" Now she was bellicose.
"I just think it would be, that's all."
"You think I'm drunk," she asked.
"No."
"You do, don't you. You think I'm drunk, you nosy sonofabitch. What are you doing here anyhow? I don't know you. I never asked you to come here and you don't know me. You don't know anything about me excepting where I went to school. You don't even know my maiden name, do you?"
"No."
"You don't know anything about me, you don't even know my maiden name and yet you have the cheek to sit there and tell me I'm drunk. I've been drinking, that's true, and I'll tell you why. I can't drive safely on the goddam Jersey Turnpike sober. That road and all the rest of the freeways and thruways were engineered for clowns and drunks. If you're not a nerveless clown then you have to get drunk. No sensitive or intelligent man or woman can drive on those roads. Why I have a friend in California who smokes pot before he goes on the freeway. He's a great driver, a marvelous driver, and if the traffic's bad he uses heroin. They ought to sell pot and bourbon at the gas stations. Then there wouldn't be so many accidents."
"Well let's have another drink then," I said.
"Get out," she said.
"All right."
I went out of the yellow room onto the terrace. I watched her from the window. She was reeling. She stuffed some things into a bag, tied a scarf around her hair, turned out the lights and locked the door. I followed her at a safe distance. When she got to her car she dropped the keys in the grass. She turned on the lights and I watched her grope in the grass until she recovered the keys. Then she slammed the car down the driveway and clipped the mailbox post with her right headlight. I heard her swear and a moment later I heard the noise of falling glass, and why is this sound so portentous, so like a doomcrack bell? I was happy to think that she would not continue up to Havenswood but I was mistaken. She backed the car away from the mailbox post and off she went. I spent the night at a motel in Blenville and telephoned the turnpike police in the morning. She had lasted about fifteen minutes.
XV
My lawyer arranged for the purchase of the house. I was able to get the place and eight acres of land for thirty-five thousand dollars. Her mother came down from Washington and removed her personal effects and I moved into the " house three weeks later, and began my orderly Me. I woke early, swam in the pool, ate a large breakfast and settled down to work at a table in the yellow room. I worked happily until one or sometimes later and then ate a bowl of soup. I bought some tools and spent the afternoons clearing the woods around the house and cutting and stacking wood for the fireplace. At five I took another swim and drank the first of three daily whiskeys. After supper I studied German until half past ten when I went to bed feeling limber, clean and weary. If I dreamed at all my dreams were of an exceptional innocence and purity. I had no longer any need for the mountain, the valley and the fortified city.
I kept a cat named Schwartz, not because I like cats but to keep the mice and shrews from overrunning the old house. The man in the drug store in Blenville gave me Schwartz and I knew nothing about his past. I guessed he was a middle-aged cat and he seemed to have a cranky disposition if such a thing is possible in an animal. I fed him canned cat food twice a day. There was a brand of cat food he disliked and if I forgot and gave him this he would go into the yellow room and shit in the middle of the floor. He made his point and so long as I fed him what he liked he behaved himself. We worked out a practical and unaffectionate relationship. I don't like having cats in my lap but now and then I would dutifully pick him up and pat him to prove that I was a good scout. With the early frosts the field mice began to besiege the place and Schwartz bagged a victim nearly every night. I was proud of Schwartz. At the height of his efficiency as a mouser Schwartz vanished. I let him out one night and in the morning he failed to return. I don't know much about cats but I guessed they were loyal to their homes and I supposed that a dog or a fox had killed my friend. One morning a week later (a light snow had fallen) Schwartz returned. I fed him a can of his favorite brand and gave him a few dutiful caresses. He smelled powerfully of French perfume. He had either been sitting in the lap of someone who used perfume or had been sprayed with it. It was an astringent and musky scent. The nearest house to mine was owned by some Polish farmers and the woman, I happened to know, smelled powerfully of the barnyard and nothing else. The next nearest house was shut for the winter and I couldn't think of anyone in Blenville who would use French perfume. Schwartz stayed with me that time for a week or ten days and then vanished again for a week.
When he returned he smelled like the street floor of Bergdorf Goodman during the Christmas rush. I buried my nose in his coat and felt a moment's nostalgia for the city and its women. That afternoon I got into my car and drove over the back roads between my place and Blenville, looking for someplace that might house a bewitching woman. I felt that she must be bewitching and that she was deliberately tempting me by dousing my cat with perfume. All the houses I saw were either farms or places owned by acquaintances and I stopped at the drug store and told my story.