Tender Is the Night

A bell-boy came in and gave him a note.

“I did not go to the party,” it said. “I am in my room. We leave for Livorno early in the morning.”

Dick handed the note and a tip to the boy.

“Tell Miss Hoyt you couldn’t find me.” Turning to Collis he suggested the Bonbonieri.

They inspected the tart at the bar, granting her the minimum of interest exacted by her profession, and she stared back with bright boldness; they went through the deserted lobby oppressed by draperies holding Victorian dust in stuffy folds, and they nodded at the night concierge who returned the gesture with the bitter servility peculiar to night servants. Then in a taxi they rode along cheerless streets through a dank November night. There were no women in the streets, only pale men with dark coats buttoned to the neck, who stood in groups beside shoulders of cold stone.

“My God!” Dick sighed.

“What’s a matter?”

“I was thinking of that man this afternoon: ‘This table is reserved for the Princess Orsini.’ Do you know what these old Roman families are? They’re bandits, they’re the ones who got possession of the temples and palaces after Rome went to pieces and preyed on the people.”

“I like Rome,” insisted Collis. “Why won’t you try the races?”

“I don’t like races.”

“But all the women turn out—”

“I know I wouldn’t like anything here. I like France, where everybody thinks he’s Napoleon—down here everybody thinks he’s Christ.”

At the Bonbonieri they descended to a panelled cabaret, hopelessly impermanent amid the cold stone. A listless band played a tango and a dozen couples covered the wide floor with those elaborate and dainty steps so offensive to the American eye. A surplus of waiters precluded the stir and bustle that even a few busy men can create; over the scene as its form of animation brooded an air of waiting for something, for the dance, the night, the balance of forces which kept it stable, to cease. It assured the impressionable guest that whatever he was seeking he would not find it here.

This was plain as plain to Dick. He looked around, hoping his eye would catch on something, so that spirit instead of imagination could carry on for an hour. But there was nothing and after a moment he turned back to Collis. He had told Collis some of his current notions, and he was bored with his audience’s short memory and lack of response. After half an hour of Collis he felt a distinct lesion of his own vitality.

They drank a bottle of Italian mousseaux, and Dick became pale and somewhat noisy. He called the orchestra leader over to their table; this was a Bahama Negro, conceited and unpleasant, and in a few minutes there was a row.

“You asked me to sit down.”

“All right. And I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I?”

“All right. All right. All right.”

“All right, I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I? Then you come up and asked me to put some more in the horn!”

“You asked me to sit down, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“I asked you to sit down but I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I?”

“All right. All right.”

The Negro got up sourly and went away, leaving Dick in a still more evil humor. But he saw a girl smiling at him from across the room and immediately the pale Roman shapes around him receded into decent, humble perspective. She was a young English girl, with blonde hair and a healthy, pretty English face and she smiled at him again with an invitation he understood, that denied the flesh even in the act of tendering it.

“There’s a quick trick or else I don’t know bridge,” said Collis.

Dick got up and walked to her across the room.

“Won’t you dance?”

The middle-aged Englishman with whom she was sitting said, almost apologetically: “I’m going out soon.”

Sobered by excitement Dick danced. He found in the girl a suggestion of all the pleasant English things; the story of safe gardens ringed around by the sea was implicit in her bright voice and as he leaned back to look at her, he meant what he said to her so sincerely that his voice trembled. When her current escort should leave, she promised to come and sit with them. The Englishman accepted her return with repeated apologies and smiles.

Back at his table Dick ordered another bottle of spumante.

“She looks like somebody in the movies,” he said. “I can’t think who.” He glanced impatiently over his shoulder. “Wonder what’s keeping her?”

“I’d like to get in the movies,” said Collis thoughtfully. “I’m supposed to go into my father’s business but it doesn’t appeal to me much. Sit in an office in Birmingham for twenty years—”

His voice resisted the pressure of materialistic civilization.

“Too good for it?” suggested Dick.

“No, I don’t mean that.”

“Yes, you do.”

“How do you know what I mean? Why don’t you practise as a doctor, if you like to work so much?”

Dick had made them both wretched by this time, but simultaneously they had become vague with drink and in a moment they forgot; Collis left, and they shook hands warmly.

“Think it over,” said Dick sagely.

“Think what over?”

“You know.” It had been something about Collis going into his father’s business—good sound advice.

Clay walked off into space. Dick finished his bottle and then danced with the English girl again, conquering his unwilling body with bold revolutions and stern determined marches down the floor. The most remarkable thing suddenly happened. He was dancing with the girl, the music stopped—and she had disappeared.