He knew that what he was now doing marked a turning point in his life—it was out of line with everything that had preceded it—even out of line with what effect he might hope to produce upon Rosemary. Rosemary saw him always as a model of correctness—his presence walking around this block was an intrusion. But Dick’s necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirt- sleeve fitting his wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt- sleeve like a sleeve valve, his collar molded plastically to his neck, his red hair cut exactly, his hand holding his small briefcase like a dandy—just as another man once found it necessary to stand in front of a church in Ferrara, in sackcloth and ashes. Dick was paying some tribute to things unforgotten, unshriven, unexpurgated.
XXI
After three-quarters of an hour of standing around, he became suddenly involved in a human contact. It was just the sort of thing that was likely to happen to him when he was in the mood of not wanting to see any one. So rigidly did he sometimes guard his exposed self-consciousness that frequently he defeated his own purposes; as an actor who underplays a part sets up a craning forward, a stimulated emotional attention in an audience, and seems to create in others an ability to bridge the gap he has left open. Similarly we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity—we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity.
So Dick might, himself, have analyzed the incident that ensued. As he paced the Rue des Saintes-Anges he was spoken to by a thin-faced American, perhaps thirty, with an air of being scarred and a slight but sinister smile. As Dick gave him the light he requested, he placed him as one of a type of which he had been conscious since early youth—a type that loafed about tobacco stores with one elbow on the counter and watched, through heaven knew what small chink of the mind, the people who came in and out. Intimate to garages, where he had vague business conducted in undertones, to barber shops, to the lobbies of theatres—in such places, at any rate, Dick placed him. Sometimes the face bobbed up in one of Tad’s more savage cartoons—in boyhood Dick had often thrown an uneasy glance at the dim borderland of crime on which he stood.
“How do you like Paris, Buddy?”
Not waiting for an answer the man tried to fit in his footsteps with Dick’s: “Where you from?” he asked encouragingly.
“From Buffalo.”
“I’m from San Antone—but I been over here since the war.”
“You in the army?”
“I’LL say I was. Eighty-fourth Division—ever heard of that outfit?”
The man walked a little ahead of him and fixed him with eyes that were practically menacing.
“Staying in Paris awhile, Buddy? Or just passing through.”
“Passing through.”
“What hotel you staying at?”
Dick had begun laughing to himself—the party had the intention of rifling his room that night. His thoughts were read apparently without self-consciousness.
“With a build like yours you oughtn’t to be afraid of me, Buddy. There’s a lot of bums around just laying for American tourists, but you needn’t be afraid of me.”
Becoming bored, Dick stopped walking: “I just wonder why you’ve got so much time to waste.”
“I’m in business here in Paris.”
“In what line?”
“Selling papers.”
The contrast between the formidable manner and the mild profession was absurd—but the man amended it with:
“Don’t worry; I made plenty money last year—ten or twenty francs for a Sunny Times that cost six.”
He produced a newspaper clipping from a rusty wallet and passed it over to one who had become a fellow stroller—the cartoon showed a stream of Americans pouring from the gangplank of a liner freighted with gold.
“Two hundred thousand—spending ten million a summer.”
“What you doing out here in Passy?”
His companion looked around cautiously. “Movies,” he said darkly. “They got an American studio over there. And they need guys can speak English. I’m waiting for a break.”
Dick shook him off quickly and firmly.
It had become apparent that Rosemary either had escaped on one of his early circuits of the block or else had left before he came into the neighborhood; he went into the bistro on the corner, bought a lead disk and, squeezed in an alcove between the kitchen and the foul toilet, he called the Roi George. He recognized Cheyne-Stokes tendencies in his respiration—but like everything the symptom served only to turn him in toward his emotion. He gave the number of the hotel; then stood holding the phone and staring into the café; after a long while a strange little voice said hello.
“This is Dick—I had to call you.”
A pause from her—then bravely, and in key with his emotion: “I’m glad you did.”
“I came to meet you at your studio—I’m out in Passy across the way from it. I thought maybe we’d ride around through the Bois.”
“Oh, I only stayed there a minute! I’m so sorry.” A silence.
“Rosemary.”
“Yes, Dick.”
“Look, I’m in an extraordinary condition about you. When a child can disturb a middle-aged gent—things get difficult.”
“You’re not middle-aged, Dick—you’re the youngest person in the world.”