Dusk and Other Stories

Inge laughs. “They are my savings,” she says.

They seem like that, like belts, like part of some costume she is wearing. When she lies back, they are gone. Her limbs are clean. Her stomach, like the rest of her, is covered with a faint, golden down. Two Spanish youths are strolling past along the sea.

She is talking to the sky. If she goes to America, she recites, is it worthwhile to bring her car? After all, she got it at a very good price, she could probably sell it if she didn’t want to keep it and make some money.

“America is full of Volkswagens,” Malcolm says.

“Yes?”

“It’s filled with German cars, everyone has one.”

“They must like them,” she decides. “The Mercedes is a good car.”

“Greatly admired,” Malcolm says.

“That’s the car I would like. I would like a couple of them. When I have money, that will be my hobby,” she says. “I’d like to live in Tangier.”

“Quite a beach there.”

“Yes? I will be black as an Arab.”

“Better wear your suit,” Malcolm says.

Inge smiles.

Nico seems asleep. They lie there silent, their feet pointed to the sun. The strength of it has gone. There are only passing moments of warmth when the wind dies all the way and the sun is flat upon them, weak but flooding. An hour of melancholy is approaching, the hour when everything is ended.

At six o’clock Nico sits up. She is cold.

“Come,” Inge says, “we’ll go for a walk up the beach.”

She insists on it. The sun has not set. She becomes very playful.

“Come,” she says, “it’s the good section, all the big villas are there. We’ll walk along and make the old men happy.”

“I don’t want to make anyone happy,” Nico says, hugging her arms.

“It isn’t so easy,” Inge assures her.

Nico goes along sullenly. She is holding her elbows. The wind is from the shore. There are little waves now which seem to break in silence. The sound they make is soft, as if forgotten. Nico is wearing a gray tank suit with an open back, and while Inge plays before the houses of the rich, she looks at the sand.

Inge goes into the sea. Come, she says, it’s warm. She is laughing and happy, her gaiety is stronger than the hour, stronger than the cold. Malcolm walks slowly in behind her. The water is warm. It seems purer as well. And it is empty, as far in each direction as one can see. They are bathing in it alone. The waves swell and lift them gently. The water runs over them, laving the soul.

At the entrance to the cabins the young Spanish boys stand around waiting for a glimpse if the shower door is opened too soon. They wear blue woolen trunks. Also black. Their feet appear to have very long toes. There is only one shower and in it a single, whitened tap. The water is cold. Inge goes first. Her suit appears, one small piece and then the other, draped over the top of the door. Malcolm waits. He can hear the soft slap and passage of her hands, the sudden shattering of the water on concrete when she moves aside. The boys at the door exalt him. He glances out. They are talking in low voices. They reach out to tease each other, to make an appearance of play.

The streets of Sitges have changed. An hour has struck which announces evening, and everywhere there are strolling crowds. It’s difficult to stay together. Malcolm has an arm around each of them. They drift to his touch like horses. Inge smiles. People will think the three of them do it together, she says.

They stop at a cafe. It isn’t a good one, Inge complains.

“It’s the best,” Nico says simply. It is one of her qualities that she can tell at a glance, wherever she goes, which is the right place, the right restaurant, hotel.

“No,” Inge insists.

Nico seems not to care. They wander on separated now, and Malcolm whispers, “What is she looking for?”

“Don’t you know?” Nico says.

“You see these boys?” Inge says. They are seated in another place, a bar. All around them, tanned limbs, hair faded from the long, baking afternoons, young men sit with the sweet stare of indolence.

“They have no money,” she says. “None of them could take you to dinner. Not one of them. They have nothing. This is Spain,” she says.

Nico chooses the place for dinner. She has become a lesser person during the day. The presence of this friend, this girl she casually shared a life with during the days they both were struggling to find themselves in the city, before she knew anybody or even the names of streets, when she was so sick that they wrote out a cable to her father together—they had no telephone—this sudden revelation of Inge seems to have deprived the past of decency. All at once she is pierced by a certainty that Malcolm feels contempt for her. Her confidence, without which she is nothing, has gone. The tablecloth seems white and dazzling. It seems to be illuminating the three of them with remorseless light. The knives and forks are laid out as if for surgery. The plates lie cold. She is not hungry but she doesn’t dare refuse to eat. Inge is talking about her boyfriend.

“He is terrible,” she says, “he is heartless. But I understand him. I know what he wants. Anyway, a woman can’t hope to be everything to a man. It isn’t natural. A man needs a number of women.”

“You’re crazy,” Nico says flatly.

“It’s true.”

The statement is all that was needed to demoralize her. Malcolm is inspecting the strap of his watch. It seems to Nico he is permitting all this. He is stupid, she thinks. This girl is from a low background and he finds that interesting. She thinks because they go to bed with her they will marry her. Of course not. Never. Nothing, Nico thinks, could be farther from the truth, though even as she thinks she knows she may be wrong.

They go to Chez Swann for a coffee. Nico sits apart. She is tired, she says. She curls up on one of the couches and goes to sleep. She is exhausted. The evening has become quite cool.

A voice awakens her, music, a marvelous voice amid occasional phrases of the guitar. Nico hears it in her sleep and sits up. Malcolm and Inge are talking. The song is like something long-awaited, something she has been searching for. She reaches over and touches his arm.

“Listen,” she says.

“What?”

“Listen,” she says, “it’s Maria Pradera.”

“Maria Pradera?”

“The words are beautiful,” Nico says.

Simple phrases. She repeats them, as if they were litany. Mysterious repetitions: dark-haired mother… dark- haired child. The eloquence of the poor, worn smooth and pure as a stone.

Malcolm listens patiently but he hears nothing. She can see it: he has changed, he has been poisoned while she slept with stories of a hideous Spain fed bit by bit until now they are drifting through his veins, a Spain devised by a woman who knows she can never be more than part of what a man needs. Inge is calm. She believes in herself. She believes in her right to exist, to command.

The road is dark. They have opened the roof to the night, a night so dense with stars that they seem to be pouring into the car. Nico, in the back, feels frightened. Inge is talking. She reaches over to blow the horn at cars which are going too slow. Malcolm laughs at it. There are private rooms in Barcelona where, with her lover, Inge spent winter afternoons before a warm, crackling fire. There are houses where they made love on blankets of fur. Of course, he was nice then. She had visions of the Polo Club, of dinner parties in the best houses.

The streets of the city are almost deserted. It is nearly midnight, Sunday midnight. The day in the sun has wearied them, the sea has drained them of strength. They drive to General Mitre and say good night through the windows of the car. The elevator rises very slowly. They are hung with silence. They look at the floor like gamblers who have lost.

The apartment is dark. Nico turns on a light and then vanishes. Malcolm washes his hands. He dries them. The rooms seem very still. He begins to walk through them slowly and finds her, as if she had fallen, on her knees in the doorway to the terrace.