Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (New York Review Books Classics) Read online

  “Yes, sweetheart. It doesn’t matter.”

  In a voice so low, so soft …

  “You came home first, but I’m with you now … We’re both home now, aren’t we? And isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It’s wonderful, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t cry … You mustn’t cry … I’m not crying, either. But I’m not used to it yet. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s over now … It’s been a long time, and the going was sometimes hard … But I’m here … And I know … I love you, Kay … Can you hear me? I love you … I love you … I love you!”

  And he buried his wet face in his pillow, his body racked with sobs, while Kay was still smiling at him, while her soft, deep voice was whispering in his ear: “Yes, sweetheart.”

  9

  A LETTER came for him in the morning mail, and even without the Mexican stamp he would have known that it was from Kay. He’d never seen her handwriting before. But it was exactly like her! He was very moved by this Kay—girlish, hesitant, and so terribly imprudent, a Kay nobody else knew.

  He was probably being ridiculous, but in the curves of certain letters he thought he recognized the curves of her body. Some of the down strokes were very fine, like the imperceptible lines on her face. And there were sudden, unexpected forays into boldness. And a lot that was weak as well; a graphologist might have detected her illness, because he was certain, almost convinced, that she was still ill, that she had never been fully cured, and would bear her sickness with her all her life.

  And her cross-outs, so oddly candid, when she stumbled on some syllable she couldn’t spell.

  She hadn’t mentioned the letter during last night’s phone call, probably because there hadn’t been time. Perhaps there was too much else she wanted to say, or she’d just forgotten.

  It was not as gray as it had been, and though the rain still fell, now it seemed like background music to his thoughts.

  My darling,

  How alone and unhappy you must be! I’ve been here for three days now and I haven’t had time to write or found a way to telephone. But I’ve never stopped thinking about my poor François, who must be having a bad time there in New York

  Because I’m sure you’re feeling lost and alone, and I still wonder what I did, what you possibly see in me that makes my presence so necessary to you.

  If only you could have seen how miserable you looked in the taxi at the station! It took all my courage not to turn around and come back to you. Can I tell you that it made me happy?

  Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but since New York you’ve never been out of my thoughts, even when I’m with my daughter.

  I’ll telephone you tonight or tomorrow night, depending on how my daughter is doing. Since my arrival I’ve spent every night at the hospital, where they set up a bed for me in a room next to Michelle’s. I admit I didn’t dare ask for a line through to New York. Either I call from my room, where the door to my daughter’s room is always open, or I call from the office, which is run by a dragon lady in eyeglasses who doesn’t like me.

  If all goes well, this will be my last night at the hospital.

  But I’ll tell you everything, because otherwise, I know, you’ll imagine all sorts of things and just torture yourself.

  First of all, I confess right away that I almost deceived you. Don’t worry, my poor darling. You’ll soon see what I mean. After I left you in the taxi and bought my ticket, all of a sudden I felt so alone that I raced to the restaurant. I wanted to burst into tears, my poor François! I could still see you looking out through the taxi window, all haggard and tragic.

  There was a man next to me at the counter. I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him again or be able to say if he was young or old, but I said to him: “Talk to me, will you, please? I have twenty minutes before my train leaves. Say anything at all, anything, so I won’t burst into tears right here in public.”

  I must have looked like an idiot, once again. I was certainly acting like one, I realized afterward. But I needed to talk, to pour out my heart to somebody, and I don’t remember what I told that stranger for the next quarter hour.

  I talked about you, about us. I told him I was going away and that you were staying behind.

  Then I thought I still had time to call you. It was only when I was in the booth that I remembered you didn’t have a phone yet.

  I ended up on the train, I don’t know how, and I slept all day. I didn’t even have the strength to walk to the dining car. All I had to eat was an orange.

  Is all this boring to you? My daughter is asleep. The nurse has just gone out; she has to look after another patient on the floor and has to change the ice bag on the patient’s stomach every hour.

  I’m in my little bed like the one at the sanatorium, in a whitewashed room with a little light shining on the stationery, which is propped up against my knees.

  I think about you, about us. I still wonder how it’s possible. I wondered about that during the whole trip. You see, I can’t get rid of the feeling that I don’t deserve you! And I’m afraid of hurting you again. You know what I mean, my François, but I’m convinced now that one day you’ll realize that this is the first time I’ve been in love. Are you beginning to feel it yet? I hope you are for your own sake. I don’t want you to be hurt anymore.

  I must stop writing about these things, otherwise I might pick up the phone and call New York whether Michelle can hear or not.

  I was surprised to find her already quite grown up. She looks like me, much more like me than she did when she was small, when everyone said she took after her father. She’s noticed it, too, and she looks at me—I’m sorry if I seem just a little conceited writing this—she looks at me, as I said, with a sort of admiration.

  When I got to the station after two days of traveling, it was already past eleven. On the off chance, I’d sent a telegram from the border, and a car from the embassy was waiting for me at the station.

  It seemed funny to be alone in a limousine crossing through a brightly lit city where the people were only just waking up. The driver said, “Madame needn’t worry. The doctors believe the young lady is out of danger. The operation yesterday was successful.”

  I was glad that Larski didn’t meet me at the station. He wasn’t at the embassy, either, where I was met by a sort of governess, very Hungarian and very much the great-lady-who-has-fallen-upon-hard-times. She showed me to the apartment set aside for me.

  “If you wish to go to the hospital tonight, a car from the embassy is at your disposal.”

  I don’t know if you understand how it felt, sweetheart, to be all alone in that huge place with nothing but my poor suitcase.

  “The maid will run a bath for you. Afterward, you will no doubt wish to eat something?”

  I don’t remember if I did eat. They rolled a table, all set, into my room like in a hotel. There was a bottle of Tokay, and I have to confess, and you can either laugh at me or scold me, that I drank it all.

  The hospital was on a hill at the edge of town … Everything was very formal. Larski was in the waiting room with one of the surgeons who had just examined Michelle. He bowed to me. By way of introduction, he said: “The mother of my daughter.”

  He was in formal dress, which isn’t that odd since he’d obviously just come from some diplomatic function, but it made him look icier than ever.

  The doctor said that in his opinion the danger was over, but that he wanted another few days to be sure. It was only when he went away and Larski and I were left alone in that sort of sitting room that reminded me of a convent, that Larski, who was as cool and poised as ever, gave me the details.

  “I hope you were not annoyed by my slight delay in notifying you, but I had some trouble locating your current address.”

  And you know, sweetheart, that it wasn’t my current address, because we were at our place!

  Forgive me for those last two words, but I have to write them, to say them out loud, to convince my
self that it’s true. I was unhappy—I know you must have been, too—and I should have been with you, which I know so well is the place where I belong.

  In the middle of the night they decided to operate. I’m trying to tell you everything, but my thoughts get a little mixed up. Do you realize I still don’t know how long Michelle has been in Mexico? We’ve barely had a chance to talk, and anyway she’s so shy around me that she hardly says a word. If I start talking, the nurse signals me to be quiet. It’s even written on the walls!

  What was I saying, François? I forget how many days, exactly, I’ve been here. I sleep in the nurse’s room, but she’s hardly ever there, as I think I’ve already told you, because she has to spend so much time with the other patient, who’s also a young girl.

  Michelle often talks softly in her sleep. She speaks in Hungarian and mentions names I don’t know.

  In the morning, I help bathe her. She has a little body that reminds me of mine when I was her age, and it brings tears to my eyes. She’s as shy as I was then. For one part of the washing-up she won’t let me stay in the room, even if I turn my back.

  I don’t know what she thinks of me, or what people have told her about me. When she looks at me, she’s both curious and astonished. When her father comes, she looks at us without saying anything.

  I think of you all the time, François, even—and I know this is not a nice thing to write—even the other evening, at about ten o’clock, when Michelle fell unconscious and everyone was so scared that they telephoned the opera to have her father paged.

  Am I a heartless monster?

  Larski looks at me strangely. Sometimes I wonder if something hasn’t changed in me since I met you, since I fell in love with you, if there isn’t something new in me that even people who don’t care about me notice.

  Even the Hungarian lady at the embassy—you should see the way she looks at me!

  Because every morning a car comes to take me back from the hospital. I go straight up to my apartment. I have my meals there. I’ve never laid eyes on the dining room, and what I know of the rest of the place comes from a glimpse I once caught passing through, when they were doing the cleaning and all the doors were open.

  The only real conversation I’ve had with Larski was in his office. He telephoned me one day to ask if I could meet him there at eleven.

  Like everyone else, he looked at me with some surprise. There may have been a hint of pity in his expression, too; probably because of my dress, my hands without rings on them, and my face, since I haven’t bothered to put on makeup. But there was something more than pity in his eyes. I don’t know what it was and can’t explain it. It’s as if people can sort of sniff out love, and it sets them on edge.

  He asked me, “Are you happy?”

  I said yes, very simply and looking him straight in the eyes, and he blinked first.

  “I am taking advantage, if that is the phrase, of the occasion that has accidentally thrown us together again to inform you of my forthcoming marriage.”

  “I thought you were already remarried.”

  “I was. It was a mistake.”

  He made an elegant gesture with his hand. Don’t be jealous, François, but he really has very beautiful hands.

  “I am remarrying, beginning my life again, and that’s why I brought Michelle here, because she will have a place in my new home.”

  He thought I was going to burst into tears or turn pale, I don’t know. And the whole time, I swear it, I beg you to believe me, I was thinking about you. I wanted so much to say to him, “I’m in love!” But he already knew it. He could tell. It’s impossible for people not to tell.

  “That, Katherine, is why …”

  Again I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to tell you everything.

  “That is why you must not be angry about being excluded from the daily life of this house, and why I hope your stay here will not be unduly prolonged. I have tried to do my duty.”

  “I thank you for it.”

  “There are several other matters that I have wanted settled for some time, and, if I have not done so, it is only because I had been unable to locate you.”

  I’ll tell you all about it when I see you, François. I haven’t made any hard-and-fast commitments. But please believe that everything I’ve done was for your sake, with you in mind, and in the belief that we will always be together.

  Now you know pretty much everything about my time here. Don’t on any account think I’m being humiliated. I’m a stranger in this house, and I speak to no one except the Hungarian lady and the servants. They’re polite and distant. Except for one of the maids, a girl from Budapest, whose name is Nouchi. One morning she surprised me getting out of my bath and said, “Madame has skin exactly like Miss Michelle’s.”

  You, too, my love, told me one night that you liked my skin. My daughter’s is much softer and whiter. Her skin…

  But here I am, getting sad again. I didn’t want to be sad tonight when I wrote to you. But I wanted so much to send you something worthwhile!

  And I have nothing to give you. On the contrary. You know what I’m thinking, what you’re thinking all the time, in spite of yourself, and it frightens me, until I wonder if I should return to New York at all.

  If I were a real heroine, like the ones people talk about, I probably wouldn’t come back. I’d disappear, as they say, without a forwarding address, and perhaps you’d soon find someone to console you.

  I’m not a heroine, my François. As you can see! I’m not even a mother. At my daughter’s bedside, it’s my lover I’m thinking about, my lover I’m writing to, and I’m proud to write that word for the first time in my life.

  My lover…

  Like in our song—do you still remember it? Have you gone out to listen to it? I hope not—imagining your poor head hearing it, I’m scared you might drink too much.

  You mustn’t. I wonder what you do with all the days, your long days of waiting. You must spend hours and hours in our room, and by now I’m sure you know every detail in the life of our little tailor, who I miss, too.

  I don’t want to think about it anymore, or else I’ll call you and risk making a scandal. That is, if you did manage to get a phone installed so quickly!

  I don’t know yet if it’ll be tomorrow night or the night after that Michelle will be well enough for me to sleep at the embassy, where there’s a phone in my bedroom.

  I’ve already asked Larski in passing, “Would you mind if I made a call to New York?”

  I could see his jaw tighten. Now don’t start imagining things, my love. It’s an old tic of his. It’s about the only sign of emotion anyone can make out on his face.

  And I think he would have been quite happy to find that I was alone in the world, even desperate!

  Not to take advantage of it, you idiot! That’s all over. But because he’s so incredibly proud.

  He replied coolly, bowing from the waist, another tic of his that helps a diplomat, “Whenever you wish.”

  He knew. And I, my love, wanted to shout your name in his face: “François!”

  If this goes on much longer, I’ll have to talk to somebody about you, anyone, the way I did at the station. You won’t hold that stupid story at the station against me, will you? You know, don’t you, that it was all because of you, because I couldn’t carry you around with me all by myself for so long?

  I remember how you looked when you said, “You just can’t help turning on the charm, can you, even for a cafeteria boy or a taxi driver? You’re so desperate for attention from men that you demand it from the beggars you give a dime to in the street.”

  Well, I’m going to confess something else. No, I’d better not; you wouldn’t understand. But so what? What if I said that I almost told my daughter about you, that I did mention you to her, vaguely—oh, very vaguely, so don’t worry—as if I were talking about an old friend, someone I can always trust…

  It’s already four o’clock in the morning. I had no idea.
I’ve run out of paper. I’ve already written in all the margins, as you can see, and I wonder what kind of sense you are going to make of it all.

  I want so much for you not to be sad, for you not to be lonely, for you to have confidence in us, too. I’d give anything not to see you hurt because of me.

  I’ll call you tomorrow night or the night after. I’ll hear your voice, you’ll be at our place.

  I’m just worn out.

  Good night, François

  That day, he experienced such deep happiness that he knew no one could see him and not notice it.

  It was so simple. It was simply beautiful!

  He still had some nagging worries, like the pangs of a convalescent, but he was entirely enveloped by an immense serenity.

  She would come back. Life would begin again.

  That was all.

  And all he had to do was think: She’ll come back, she’ll come back. Life will begin again.

  He didn’t want to laugh, to smile, to dance, but he was happy, calm, dignified. And he didn’t want to start worrying.

  The fears were obviously ridiculous, right?

  The letter was written three days ago … In three days who knows what could happen?

  He used to try to imagine the apartment Kay shared with Jessie, before he’d actually seen it, and of course he’d been entirely wrong. Now he imagined the vast embassy in Mexico City, with Larski, whom he’d never seen, sitting in his office in front of Kay.

  What had he proposed to her that she’d accepted without accepting, that she wouldn’t tell him about until later?

  Would she call again tonight? At what time?

  Because she didn’t know. He’d been silent on the telephone. She knew nothing of what had been going on inside him. She still didn’t know he was in love with her.

  How could she know, since he himself hadn’t known until a few hours ago!

  So, what would happen next? Would they still be in tune with each other? He wanted to tell her the news, to explain everything right now.

  Since her daughter was out of danger, why didn’t she come home? Why was she wasting time down there anyhow, surrounded by all those dreary, hostile presences?