The Winds of War

“Oh, that’s what you think. You should have seen the library and study when I got back. And he hadn’t written anything in weeks. Aaron should have gotten married ages ago. He didn’t, and he needs a lot of fussing and petting. He can’t even sharpen a pencil properly.”

Byron wondered whether Natalie’s irritable garrulity was due to the brandy. She was gesturing broadly, talking breathlessly, and her eyes were wild. “And there’s still another complication, you know. The biggest.”

“What’s that?”

She stared at him. “Don’t you know what it is, Briny? Haven’t you any idea? Not the faintest inkling? Come on now. Stop it.”

He said or rather stammered, because the sudden penetrating sexuality in Natalie Jastrow’s glance made him drunk, “I don’t think I do.”

“All right then, I’ll tell you. You’ve done it, you devil, and you know it. You’ve done what you’ve wanted to do from the first day you came here. I’m in love with you.” She peered at him, her eyes shining and enormous. “Ye gods, what a dumb stunned face. Don’t you believe me?”

Very hoarsely he said, “I just hope it’s true.”

He got out of his chair, and went to her. She jumped up and they embraced. “Oh God,” she said, clinging to him, and she kissed him and kissed him. “You have such a marvellous mouth,” she muttered. She thrust her hands in his hair, she caressed his face. “Such a nice smile. Such fine hands. I love to watch your hands. I love the way you move. You’re so sweet.” It was like a hundred daydreams Byron had had, but far more intense and confusing and delicious. She was rubbing against him in crude sensual delight, almost like a cat, the brown wool dress was scratchy in his hands. The perfume of her hair couldn’t be daydreamed, nor the moist warm sweet breath of her mouth. Above all gleamed the inconceivable wonder that this was happening. They stood embraced by the crackling flames, kissing, saying broken foolish sentences, whispering, laughing, kissing, and kissing again.

Natalie pulled away. She ran a few steps and faced him, her eyes blazing. “Well, all right. I had to do that or die.” I’ve never felt anything like this in my life, Byron, this maddening pull to you. I’ve been fighting it off and fighting it off because it’s no damn good, you know. You’re a boy. I won’t have it. Not a Christian. Not again. And besides -” She put both hands over her face. “Oh. Oh! Don’t look at me like that, Briny. Go out of my bedroom.” Byron turned to go, on legs almost caving under him. He wanted to please her.

She said in the next breath, “Christ, you’re a gentleman. It’s one of the unbelievable things about you. Would you rather stay? My darling, my love, I don’t want to put you out, I want to talk some more, but I want to make some sense, that’s all. And I don’t want to make any false moves. I’ll do anything you say. I absolutely adore you.”

He looked at her standing in the firelight in the long wool dress with her arms crossed, one leg out to a side, one hip thrust out, a typical Natalie pose. He was dazed with happiness beyond imagining, and flooded with gratitude for being alive. “Listen — would you think of marrying me?” Byron said.

Natalie’s eyes popped wide open and her mouth dropped. Byron could not help it; he burst out laughing at the comic change of her face, and that made her laugh crazily too. She came to him, almost flung herself at him, still laughing so uproariously that she could hardly manage to kiss him. “God in heaven,” she gasped, twining him in her arms, “you’re incredible. That’s two proposals in one day for la Jastrow! It never rains but it pours, eh?”

“I’m serious,” he said. “I don’t know why we’re laughing. I want to marry you. It’s always seemed preposterous but if you really do love me -”

“It is preposterous” — Natalie spoke with her lips to his cheek — preposterous beyond words, but where you’re concerned I appear to be quite mindless, and perhaps — well! Nobody can say you’re a beardless boy, anyway! Quite sandpapery, aren’t you?” She kissed him once more, hard, and loosened her arms. “The first idea was right. You leave. Good-night, darling. I know you’re serious, and I’m terribly touched. One thing we’ve got in this godforsaken place is time, all the time in the world.”

In the darkness, on his narrow bed in the tiny attic room, Byron lay wide awake. For a while he heard her moving about below, then the house was silent. He could still taste Natalie’s lips. His hands smelled of her perfume. Outside in the valley donkeys heehawed to each other across the echoing slopes, a misguided rooster hailed a dawn hours away, and dogs barked. There came a rush of wind and a long drumming of rain on the tiles, and after a while water dripped into the pail near his bed, under the worst leak. The rain passed, moonlight shafted faint and blue through the little round window, the pattering in the pail ceased, and still Byron lay with open eyes, trying to believe it, trying to separate his dreams and fantasies of half a year from the real hour when Natalie Jastrow had overwhelmed him with endearments. Now his feverish mind ran on what he must do next. The window was turning violet when he fell asleep in a jumble of ideas and resolves, ranging from medical school and short-story writing to the banking business in Washington. Some distant cousins of his mother did control a bank.

* * *

“Hi, Natalie.”

“Oh, hi there. Sleep well?”

It was almost eleven when he hurried into the library. Byron was a hardened slugabed, but he had not come down this late before. Three books lay open on Natalie’s desk, and she was typing away. She gave him one ardent glance and went on with her work. Byron found on his desk a mass of first-draft pages heavily scribbled with Jastrow’s corrections, to which was clipped a note in red crayon: Let me have this material a lunch, please.

“A.J. looked in here ten minutes ago,” Natalie said, “and made vile noises.”

Byron counted the pages. “He’s going to make viler ones at lunch. I’m sorry, but I didn’t close my eyes till dawn.”

“Didn’t you?” she said, with a secret little smile. “I slept exceedingly well.”

With a quick shuffling of papers and carbon he began to type, straining his eyes at Jastrow’s scrawl. A hand ran through his hair and rested warmly on his neck. “Let’s see.” She stood over him, looking down at him with affectionate amusement. Pinned on the old brown dress over her left breast was the gold brooch with purple stones from Warsaw. She had never before worn it. She glanced through the pages and took a few. “Poor Briny, why couldn’t you sleep? Never mind, type your head off, and so will I.”

They did not finish the work before lunch, but by then, as it turned out, Dr. Jastrow had other things on his mind. At noon, an enormous white Lancia rattled the gravel outside the villa. Byron and Natalie could hear the rich voice of Tom Searle and the warm hard laugh of his wife. Celebrated American actors, the Searles had been living off and on for fifteen years in a hilltop villa not far from Jastrows. The woman painted and gardened, while the man built brick walls and did the cooking. Endlessly they read old plays, new plays, and novels that might become plays. Other celebrities came to Siena just to see them. Through them Jastrow had met and entertained Maugham, Berenson, Gertrude Lawrence, and Picasso. A retired college professor would have been a minnow among these big fish; but the success of A Jew’s Jesus had put him fairly in their company. He loved being part of the celebrities’ group, though he grumbled about the interference with his work. He often drove down to Florence with the Searles to meet their friends, and Natalie and Byron thought the actors might be passing by now to fetch him off. But coming down for lunch, they found A.J. alone in the drawing room, sneezing, red-nosed, and waving an emptied sherry glass. He complained that they were late. In fact they were a bit early.

“The Searles are leaving,” he said when lunch was over, having sneezed and blown his nose all through the meal without uttering a word. “Just like that. They came to say good-bye.”

“Oh? Are they doing a new play?” said Natalie.

“They’re getting out. Lock, stock, and barrel. They’re moving every stick back to the States.”

“But doesn’t their lease run for how many more years? Five?”

“Seven. They’re abandoning the lease. They can’t afford to get stuck here, they say, if the war spreads.” Jastrow morosely fingered his beard. “That’s one difference between leasing and buying. You just walk away. You don’t bother your head about what happens to the place. I must say they urged me to lease. I should have listened to them. But the purchase price was so cheap!”

Byron said, “Well, sir, if you think there’s any danger, your skin comes first.”

“I have no such fears. Neither have they. For them it’s a matter of business. We’ll have our coffee in the lemon house.” With a peevish toss of his head, he lapsed into silence.

The lemon house, a long glassed-in structure with a dirt floor, full of small potted citrus trees, looked out on a grand panorama of the town and the rounded brown hills. Sheltered here from cold winds that swept up the ravine, the trees throve in the pouring sunlight, and all winter long blossomed and bore fruit. Jastrow believed, contrary to every medical opinion, that the sweet heavy scent of the orange and lemon blooms was good for the