t last there came the note which I had been waiting for, from Hella, telling me the day and hour she would arrive in Paris. I did not tell this to Giovanni, but walked out alone that day and went to the station to meet her.

I had hoped that when I saw her something instantaneous, definitive, would have happened to me, something to make me know where I should be and where I was. But nothing happened. I recognized her at once, before she saw me, she was wearing green, her hair was a little shorter, and her face was tan, and she wore the same brilliant smile. I loved her as much as ever and I still did not know how much that was.

When she saw me she stood stock-still on the platform, her hands clasped in front of her, with her wide-legged, boyish stance, smiling. For a moment we simply stared at each other.

'Eh bien,' she said, 't'embrasse pas ta femme?'

Then I took her in my arms and something happened then. I was terribly glad to see her. It really seemed, with Hella in the circle of my arms, that my arms were home and I was welcoming her back there. She fitted in my arms, she always had, and the shock of holding her caused me to feel that my arms had been empty since she had been away.

I held her very close in that high, dark shed, with a great confusion of people all about us, just beside the breathing train. She smelled of the wind and the sea and of space and I felt in her marvellously living body the possibility of legitimate surrender.

Then she pulled away. Her eyes were damp. 'Let me look at you,' she said. She held me at arm's length, searching my face. 'Ah. You look wonderful. I'm so happy to see you again.'

I kissed her lightly on the nose and felt that I had passed the first inspection. I picked up her bags and we started toward the exit. 'Did you have a good trip? And how was Seville? And how do you like bull-fights? Did you meet any bull-fighters? Tell me everything.'

She laughed. 'Everything is a very tall order. I had a terrible trip, I hate trains, I wish I'd flown but I've been in one Spanish airplane and I swore never, never again. It rattled, my dear, in the middle of the air just like a model T Ford—it had probably been a model T Ford at one time—and I just sat there, praying and drinking brandy. I was sure I'd never see land again.' We passed through the barrier, into the streets.' Hella looked about delightedly at all of it, the cafés, the self-contained people, the violent snarl of the traffic, the blue-caped traffic policeman and his white, gleaming club. 'Coming back to Paris,' she said, after a moment, 'is always so lovely, no matter where you've been.' We got into a cab and our driver made a wide, reckless circle into the stream of traffic. 'I should think that even if you returned here in some awful sorrow, you might—well, you might find it possible here to begin to be reconciled.'

'Let's hope,' I said, 'that we never have to put Paris to that test.'

Her smile was at once bright and melancholy. 'Let's hope.' Then she suddenly took my face between her hands and kissed me. There was a great question in her eyes and I knew that she burned to have this question answered at once. But I could not do it yet. I held her close and kissed her, closing my eyes. Everything was as it had been between us and at the same time everything was different.

I told myself I would not think about Giovanni yet, I would not worry about him yet; for tonight, anyway, Hella and I should be together with nothing to divide us. Still, I knew very well that this was not really possible: he had already divided us. I tried not to think of him sitting alone in that room, wondering why I stayed away so long.

Then we were sitting together in Hella's room on the rue de Tournon, sampling Fundador. 'It's much too sweet,' I said. 'Is this what they drink in Spain?'

'I never saw any Spaniards drinking it,' she said, and laughed. 'They drink wine. I drank gin-fizz—in Spain I somehow had the feeling that it was healthy,' and she laughed again.

I kept kissing her and holding her, trying to find my way in her again, as though she were a familiar, darkened room in which I fumbled to find the light. And, with my kisses, I was trying also to delay the moment which would commit me to her, or fail to commit me to her. But I think she felt that the indefinitive constraint between us was of her doing and all on her side. She was remembering that I had written her less and less often while she had been away. In Spain, until near the end, this had probably not worried her; not until she herself had come to a decision did she begin to be afraid that I might also have arrived at a decision, opposite to hers. Perhaps she had kept me dangling too long.

She was by nature forthright and impatient; she suffered when things were not clear; yet she forced herself to wait for some word or sign from me and held the reins of her strong desire tightly in her hands.

I wanted to force her to relinquish the reins. Somehow, I would be tongue-tied until I took her again. I hoped to burn out, through Hella, my image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch—I hoped to drive out fire with fire. Yet, my sense of what I was doing made me double-minded. And at last she asked me, with a smile, 'Have I been away too long?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'It's been a long time.'

'It was a very lonely time,' she said, unexpectedly. She turned slightly away from me, lying on her side, looking toward the window. 'I felt so aimless—like a tennis ball, bouncing, bouncing—I began to wonder where I'd land. I began to feel that I'd, somewhere, missed the boat.' She looked at me. 'You know the boat I'm talking about. They make movies about it where I come from. It's the boat that, when you miss it, it's a boat, but when it comes in, it's a ship.' I watched her face. It was stiller than I had ever known it to be before.

'Didn't you like Spain,' I asked, nervously, 'at all?'

She ran one hand, impatiently, through her hair. 'Oh. Of course, I like Spain, why not? It's very beautiful. I just didn't know what I was doing there. And I'm beginning to be tired of being in places for no particular reason.'

I lit a cigarette and smiled. 'But you went to Spain to get away from me—remember?'

She smiled and stroked my cheek. 'I haven't been very nice to you, have I?'

'You've been very honest.' I stood up and walked a little away from her. 'Did you get much thinking done, Hella?'

'I told you in my letter—don't you remember?'

For a moment everything seemed perfectly still. Even the faint street noises died. I had my back to her but I felt her eyes. I felt her waiting—everything seemed to be waiting.

'I wasn't sure about that letter.' I was thinking, Perhaps I can get out of it without having to tell her anything. 'You were sort of—offhand—I couldn't be sure whether you were glad or sorry to be throwing in with me.'

'Oh,' she said, 'but we've always been offhand, it's the only way I could have said it. I was afraid of embarrassing you—don't you understand that?'

What I wanted to suggest was that she was taking me out of desperation, less because she wanted me than because I was there. But I could not say it. I sensed that, though it might be true, she no longer knew it.

'But perhaps,' she said, carefully, 'you feel differently now. Please say so if you do.' She waited for my answer for a moment. Then: 'You know, I'm not really the emancipated girl I try to be at all. I guess I just want a man to come home to me every night. I want to be able to sleep with a man without being afraid he's going to knock me up. Hell, I want to be knocked up. I want to start having babies. In a way, it's really all I'm good for.' There was silence again. 'Is that what you want?'

'Yes,' I said, 'I've always wanted that.'

I turned to face her, very quickly, or as though strong hands on my shoulders had turned me around. The room was darkening. She lay on the bed, watching me, her mouth slightly open, and her eyes like lights. I was terribly aware of her body, and of mine. I walked over to her and put my head on her breast. I wanted to lie there, hidden and still. But then, deep within, I felt her moving, rushing to open the gates of her strong, walled city and let the king of glory come in.

Dear Dad, I wrote, I won't keep any secrets from you any more, I found a girl and I want to marry her and it wasn't that I was keeping secrets from you, I just wasn't sure she wanted to marry me. But she's finally agreed to risk it, poor soft-headed thing that she is, and we're planning to tie the knot while we're still over here and make our way home by easy stages. She's not French, in case you're worried (I know you don't dislike the French, it's just that you don't think they have our virtues—I might add, they don't). Anyway, Hella—her name is Hella Lincoln, she comes from Minneapolis, her father and mother still live there, he's a corporation lawyer, she's just the little woman—Hella would like us to honeymoon here and it goes without saying that I like anything she likes. So. Now will you send your loving son some of his hard-earned money. Tout de suite. That's French for pronto.

Hella—the photo doesn't really do her justice—came over here a couple of years ago to study painting. Then she discovered she wasn't a painter and just about the time she was ready to throw herself into the Seine, we met, and the rest, as they say, is history. I know you'll love her, Dad, and she'll love you. She's already made me a very happy man.

Hella and Giovanni met by accident, after Hella had been in Paris for three days. During those three days I had not seen him and I had not mentioned his name.

We had been wandering about the city all day and all day Hella had been full of a subject which I had never heard her discuss at such length before: women. She claimed it was hard to be one.

'I don't see what's so hard about being a woman. At least, not as long as she's got a man.'

'That's just it,' said she. 'Hasn't it ever struck you that that's a sort of humiliating necessity?'

'Oh, please,' I said. 'It never seemed to humiliate any of the women I knew.'

'Well,' she said, 'I'm sure you never thought about any of them—in that way.'

'I certainly didn't. I hope they didn't, either. And why are you? What's your beef?'

'I've got no beef,' she said. She hummed, low in her throat, a kind of playful, Mozart tune. 'I've got no beef at all. But it does seem—well, difficult—to be at the mercy of some gross, unshaven stranger before you can begin to be yourself.'

'I don't know if I like that,' I said. 'Since when have I been gross? or a stranger? It may be true that I need a shave but that's your fault, I haven't been able to tear myself away from you.' And I grinned and kissed her.

'Well,' she said, 'you may not be a stranger now. But you were once and I'm sure you will be again—many times.'

'If it comes to that,' I said, 'so will you be, for me.'

She looked at me with a quick, bright smile. 'Will I?' Then: 'But what I mean about being a woman is, we might get married now and stay married for fifty years and I might be a stranger to you every instant of that time and you might never know it.'

'But if I were a stranger—you would know it?'

'For a woman,' she said, 'I think a man is always a stranger. And there's something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger.'

'But men are at the mercy of women, too. Have you never thought of that?'

'Ah!' she said, 'men may be at the mercy of women—I think men like that idea, it strokes the misogynist in them. But if a particular man is ever at the mercy of a particular woman—why, he's somehow stopped being a man. And the lady, then, is more neatly trapped than ever.'

'You mean, I can't be at your mercy? But you can be at mine?' I laughed. 'I'd like to see you at anybody's mercy, Hella.'

'You may laugh,' she said, humorously, 'but there is something in what I say. I began to realize it in Spain—that I wasn't free, that I couldn't be free until I was attached—no, committed—to someone.'

'To someone? Not something?'

She was silent. 'I don't know,' she said at last, 'but I'm beginning to think that women get attached to something really by default. They'd give it up, if they could, anytime, for a man. Of course they can't admit this, and neither can most of them let go of what they have. But I think it kills them—perhaps I only mean,' she added, after a moment, 'that it would have killed me.'

'What do you want, Hella? What have you got now that makes such a difference?'

She laughed. 'It isn't what I've got. It isn't even what I want. It's that you've got me. So now I can be—your obedient and most loving servant.'

I felt cold. I shook my head in mock confusion. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Why,' she said, 'I'm talking about my life. I've got you to take care of and feed and torment and trick and love—I've got you to put up with. From now on, I can have a wonderful time complaining about being a woman. But I won't be terrified that I'm not one.' She looked at my face, and laughed. 'Oh, I'll be doing other things,' she cried. 'I won't stop being intelligent. I'll read and argue and think and all that—and I'll make a great point of not thinking your thoughts—and you'll be pleased because I'm sure the resulting confusion will cause you to see that I've only got a finite woman's mind, after all. And, if God is good, you'll love me more and more and we'll be quite happy.' She laughed again. 'Don't bother your head about it, sweetheart. Leave it to me.'

Her amusement was contagious and I shook my head again, laughing with her. 'You're adorable,' I said. 'I don't understand you at all.'

She laughed again. 'There,' she said, 'that's fine. We're both taking to it like ducks to water.'

We were passing a book-store and she stopped. 'Can we go in for just a minute?' she asked. 'There's a book I'd like to get. Quite,' she added, as we entered the shop, 'a trivial book.'

I watched her with amusement as she went over to speak to the woman who ran the shop. I wandered idly over to the farthest book shelf, where a man stood, his back to me, leafing through a magazine. As I stood beside him, he closed the magazine and put it down, and turned. We recognized each other at once. It was Jacques.

'Tiens!' he cried. 'Here you are! We were beginning to think that you had gone back to America.'

'Me?' I laughed. 'No, I'm still in Paris. I've just been busy.' Then, with a terrible suspicion, I asked, 'Who's we?'

'Why,' said Jacques, with a hard, insistent smile, 'your baby. It seems you left him alone in that room without any food, without any money, without, even, any cigarettes. He finally persuaded his concierge to allow him to put a phone call on his bill and called me. The poor boy sounded as though he would have put his head in the gas oven. If,' he laughed, 'he had had a gas oven.'

We stared at each other. He, deliberately, said nothing. I did not know what to say.

'I threw a few provisions in my car,' said Jacques, 'and hurried out to get him. He thought we should drag the river for you. But I assured him that he did not know Americans as well as I and that you had not drowned yourself. You had only disappeared in order—to think. And I see that I was right. You have thought so much that now you must find what others have thought before you. One book,' he said, finally, 'that you can surely spare yourself the trouble of reading is the Marquis de Sade.'

'Where is Giovanni now?' I asked.

'I finally remembered the name of Hella's hotel,' said Jacques. 'Giovanni said that you were more or less expecting her and so I gave him the bright idea of calling you there. He has stepped out for an instant to do just that. He'll be along presently.'

Hella had returned, with her book.

'You two have met before,' I said, awkwardly. 'Hella, you remember Jacques.'

She remembered him and also remembered that she disliked him. She smiled politely and held out her hand. 'How are you?'

'Je suis ravi, mademoiselle,' said Jacques. He knew that Hella disliked him and this amused him. And, to corroborate her dislike, and also because at that moment he really hated me, he bowed low over her outstretched hand and became, in an instant, outrageously and offensively effeminate. I watched him as though I were watching an imminent disaster from many miles away. He turned playfully to me. 'David has been hiding from us,' he murmured, 'now that you are back.'

'Oh?' said Hella, and moved closer to me, taking my hand, 'that was very naughty of him. I'd never have allowed it—if I'd known we were hiding.' She grinned. 'But then, he never tells me anything.'

Jacques looked at her. 'No doubt,' he said, 'he finds more fascinating topics when you are together than why he hides from old friends.'

I felt a great need to get out of there before Giovanni arrived. 'We haven't eaten supper yet,' I said, trying to smile, 'perhaps we can meet you later?' I knew that my smile was begging him to be kind to me.

But at that moment the tiny bell which announced every entry into the shop rang, and Jacques said, 'Ah. Here is Giovanni.' And, indeed, I felt him behind me, standing stock-still, staring, and felt in Hella's clasp, in her entire body, a kind of wild shrinking and not all of her composure kept this from showing in her face. When Giovanni spoke his voice was thick with fury and relief and unshed tears.

'Where have you been?' he cried. 'I thought you were dead! I thought you had been knocked down by a car or thrown into the river—what have you been doing all these days?'

I was able, oddly enough, to smile. And I was astonished at my calm. 'Giovanni,' I said, 'I want you to meet my fiancée. Mlle Hella. Monsieur Giovanni.'

He had seen her before his outburst ended and now he touched her hand with a still, astounded politeness and stared at her with black, steady eyes as though he had never seen a woman before.

'Enchanté, mademoiselle,' he said. And his voice was dead and cold. He looked briefly at me, then back at Hella. For a moment we, all four, stood there as though we were posing for a tableau.

'Really,' said Jacques, 'now that we are all together, I think we should have one drink together. A very short one,' he said to Hella, cutting off her attempt at polite refusal, and taking her arm. 'It's not every day,' he said, 'that old friends get together.' He forced us to move, Hella and he together, Giovanni and I ahead. The bell rang viciously as Giovanni opened the door. The evening air hit us like a blaze. We started walking away from the river, toward the boulevard.

'When I decide to leave a place,' said Giovanni, 'I tell the concierge, so that at least she will know where to forward my mail.'

I flared briefly, unhappily. I had noticed that he was shaven and wore a clean, white shirt and tie—a tie which surely belonged to Jacques. 'I don't see what you've got to complain about,' I said. 'You sure knew where to go.'

But with the look he gave me then my anger left me and I wanted to cry. 'You are not nice,' he said. 'Tu n'est pas chic du tout.' Then he said no more and we walked to the boulevard in silence. Behind us I could hear the murmur of Jacques' voice. On the corner we stood and waited for them to catch up with us.

'Darling,' said Hella, as she reached me, 'you stay and have a drink if you want to. I can't, I really can't, I don't feel well at all.' She turned to Giovanni. 'Please forgive me,' she said, 'but I've just come back from Spain and I've hardly sat down a moment since I got off the train. Another time, truly—but I must get some sleep tonight.' She smiled and held out her hand but he did not seem to see it.

'I'll walk Hella home,' I said, 'and then I'll come back. If you'll tell me where you're going to be.'

Giovanni laughed, abruptly. 'Why, we will be in the quarter,' he said. 'We will not be difficult to find.'

'I am sorry,' said Jacques, to Hella, 'that you do not feel well. Perhaps another time.' And Hella's hand, which was still uncertainly outstretched, he bowed over and kissed a second time. He straightened and looked at me. 'You must bring Hella to dinner at my house one night.' He made a face. 'There is no need to hide your fiancée from us.'

'No need whatever,' said Giovanni. 'She is very charming. And we'—with a grin, to Hella—'will try to be charming, too.'

'Well,' I said, and took Hella by the arm, 'I'll see you later.'

'If I am not here,' said Giovanni, both vindictive and near tears, 'by the time you come back again, I will be at home. You remember where that is—? It is near a zoo.'

'I remember,' I said. I started backing away, as though I were backing out of a cage, 'I'll see you later. A tout à l'heure.'

'A la prochaine,' said Giovanni.

I felt their eyes on our backs as we walked away from them. For a long while Hella was silent—possibly because, like me, she was afraid to say anything. Then: 'I really can't stand that man. He gives me the creeps.' After a moment: 'I didn't know you'd seen so much of him while I was away.'

'I didn't,' I said. To do something with my hands, to give myself a moment of privacy, I stopped and lit a cigarette. I felt her eyes. But she was not suspicious; she was only troubled.

'And who is Giovanni?' she asked, when we started walking again. She gave a little laugh. 'I just realized that I haven't even asked you where you were living. Are you living with him?'

'We've been sharing a maid's room out at the end of Paris,' I said.

'Then it wasn't very nice of you,' said Hella, 'to go off for so long, without any warning.'

'Well, my God,' I said, 'he's only my room-mate. How was I to know he'd start dragging the river just because I stayed out a couple of nights?'

'Jacques said you left him there without any money, without any cigarettes, or anything, and you didn't even tell him you were going to be with me.'

'There are lots of things I didn't tell Giovanni. But he's never made any kind of scene before—I guess he must be drunk. I'll talk to him later.'

'Are you going to go back there later?'

'Well,' I said, 'if Idon't go back there later, I'll goon over to the room. I've been meaning to do that, anyway.' I grinned. 'I have to get shaved.'

Hella sighed. 'I didn't mean to get your friends mad at you,' she said. 'You ought to go back and have a drink with them. You said you were going to.'

'Well, I may, I may not. I'm not married to them, you know.'

'Well, the fact that you're going to be married to me doesn't mean you have to break your word to your friends. It doesn't even mean,' she added, shortly, 'that I have to like your friends.'

'Hella,' I said, 'I am perfectly aware of that.'

We turned off the boulevard, toward her hotel.

'He's very intense, isn't he?' she said. I was staring at the dark mound of the Senate, which ended our dark, slightly uphill street.

'Who is?'

'Giovanni. He's certainly very fond of you.'

'He's Italian,' I said. 'Italians are theatrical.'

'Well, this one,' she laughed, 'must be special, even in Italy! How long have you been living with him?'

'A couple of months.' I threw away my cigarette, 'I ran out of money while you were away—you know, I'm still waiting for money—and I moved in with him because it was cheaper. At that time he had a job and was living with his mistress most of the time.'

'Oh?' she said. 'He has a mistress?'

'He had a mistress,' I said. 'He also had a job. He's lost both.'

'Poor boy,' she said. 'No wonder he looks so lost.'

'He'll be alright,' I said, briefly. We were before her door. She pressed the night-bell.

'Is he a very good friend of Jacques?' she asked.

'Perhaps,' I said, 'not quite good enough to please Jacques.'

She laughed. 'I always feel a cold wind go over me,' she said, 'when I find myself in the presence of a man who dislikes women as much as Jacques does.'

'Well, then,' I said, 'we'll just keep him away from you. We don't want no cold winds blowing over this girl.' I kissed her on the tip of her nose. At the same moment there was a rumble from deep within the hotel and the door unlocked itself with a small, violent shudder. Hella looked humorously into the blackness. 'I always wonder,' she said, 'if I dare go in.' Then she looked up at me. 'Well? Do you want to have a drink upstairs before you go back to join your friends?'

'Sure,' I said. We tiptoed into the hotel, closing the door gently behind us. My fingers finally found the minuterie and the weak, yellow light spilled over us. A voice, completely unintelligible, shouted out at us and Hella shouted back her name, which she tried to pronounce with a French accent. As we started up the stairs, the light went out and Hella and I began to giggle like two children. We were unable to find the minute-switch on any of the landings—I don't know why we both found this so hilarious, but we did, and we held on to each other, giggling, all the way to Hella's top-floor room.

'Tell me about Giovanni,' she asked, much later, while we lay in bed and watched the black night tease her stiff, white curtains. 'He interests me.'

'That's a pretty tactless thing to say at this moment,' I told her. 'What the hell do you mean, he interests you?'

'I mean who he is, what he thinks about. How he got that face.'

'What's the matter with his face?'

'Nothing. He's very beautiful, as a matter of fact. But there's something in that face—so old-fashioned.'

'Go to sleep,' I said. 'You're babbling.'

'How did you meet him?'

'Oh. In a bar one drunken night, with lots of other people.'

'Was Jacques there?'

'I don't remember. Yes, I guess so. I guess he met Giovanni at the same time I did.'

'What made you go to live with him?'

'I told you. I was broke and he had this room—'

'But that can't have been the only reason.'

'Oh, well,' I said, 'I liked him.'

'And don't you like him any more?'

'I'm very fond of Giovanni. You didn't see him at his best tonight, but he's a very nice man.' I laughed; covered by the night, emboldened by Hella's body and my own, and protected by the tone of my voice, I found great relief in adding: 'I love him, in a way. I really do.'

'He seems to feel that you have a funny way of showing it.'

'Oh, well,' I said, 'these people have another style from us. They're much more demonstrative. I can't help it. I just can't—do all that.'

'Yes,' she said, thoughtfully, 'I've noticed that.'

'You've noticed what?'

'Kids here—they think nothing of showing a lot of affection for each other. It's sort of a shock at first. Then you begin to think it's sort of nice.'

'It is sort of nice,' I said.

'Well,' said Hella, 'I think we ought to take Giovanni out to dinner or something one of these days. After all, he did sort of rescue you.'

'That's a good idea,' I said. 'I don't know what he's doing these days but I imagine he'll have a free evening.'

'Does he hang around with Jacques much?'

'No, I don't think so. I think he just ran into Jacques tonight.' I paused. 'I'm beginning to see,' I said, carefully, 'that kids like Giovanni are in a difficult position. This isn't, you know, the land of opportunity—there's no provision made for them. Giovanni's poor, I mean he comes from poor folks, and there isn't really much that he can do. And for what he can do, there's terrific competition. And, at that, very little money, not enough for them to be able to think of building any kind of future. That's why so many of them wander the streets and turn into gigolos and gangsters and God knows what.'

'It's cold,' she said, 'out here in the Old World.'

'Well, it's pretty cold out there in the New One, too,' I said. 'It's cold out here, period.'

She laughed. 'But we—we have our love to keep us warm.'

'We're not the first people who thought that as they lay in bed.' Nevertheless, we lay silent and still in each other's arms for a while. 'Hella,' I said at last.

'Yes?'

'Hella, when the money gets here, let's take it and get out of Paris.'

'Get out of Paris? Where do you want to go?'

'I don't care. Just out. I'm sick of Paris. I want to leave it for awhile. Let's go south. Maybe there'll be some sun.'

'Shall we get married in the south?'

'Hella,' I said, 'you have to believe me, I can't do anything or decide anything, I can't even see straight until we get out of this town. I don't want to get married here, I don't even want to think about getting married here. Let's just get out.'

'I didn't know you felt this way,' she said.

'I've been living in Giovanni's room for months,' I said, 'and I just can't stand it any more. I have to get out of there. Please.'

She laughed nervously and moved slightly away from me. 'Well, I really don't see why getting out of Giovanni's room means getting out of Paris.'

I sighed. 'Please, Hella. I don't feel like going into long explanations now. Maybe it's just that if I stay in Paris I'll keep running into Giovanni and...' I stopped.

'Why should that disturb you?'

'Well—I can't do anything to help him and I can't stand having him watch me—as though—I'm an American, Hella, he thinks I'm rich.' I paused and sat up, looking outward. She watched me.

'He's a very nice man, as I say, but he's very persistent—and he's got this thing about me, he thinks I'm God. And that room is so stinking and dirty. And soon winter'll be here and it's going to be cold...' I turned to her again and took her in my arms. 'Look. Let's just go. I'll explain a lot of things to you later—later—when we get out.'

There was a long silence.

'And you want to leave right away?' she said.

'Yes. As soon as that money comes, let's rent a house.'

'You're sure,' she said, 'that you don't just want to go back to the States?'

I groaned. 'No. Not yet. That isn't what I mean.'

She kissed me. 'I don't care where we go,' she said, 'as long as we're together.' Then she pushed me away. 'It's almost morning,' she said. 'We'd better get some sleep.'

I got to Giovanni's room very late the next evening. I had been walking by the river with Hella and, later, I drank too much in several bistros. The light crashed on as I came into the room and Giovanni sat up in bed, crying out in a voice of terror, 'Qui est là? Qui est là?'

I stopped in the doorway, weaving a little in the light, and I said, 'It's me, Giovanni. Shut up.'

Giovanni stared at me and turned on his side, facing the wall, and began to cry.

I thought, Sweet Jesus! and I carefully closed the door. I took my cigarettes out of my jacket pocket and hung my jacket over the chair. With my cigarettes in my hand I went to the bed and leaned over Giovanni. I said, 'Baby, stop crying. Please stop crying.'

Giovanni turned and looked at me. His eyes were red and wet, but he wore a strange smile, it was composed of cruelty and shame and delight. He held out his arms and I leaned down, brushing his hair from his eyes.

'You smell of wine,' said Giovanni, then.

'I haven't been drinking wine. Is that what frightened you? Is that why you are crying?'

'No.'

'What is the matter?'

'Why have you gone away from me?'

I did not know what to say. Giovanni turned to the wall again. I had hoped, I had supposed that I would feel nothing: but I felt a tightening in a far corner of my heart, as though a finger had touched me there.

'I have never reached you,' said Giovanni. 'You have never really been here. I do not think you have ever lied to me but I know that you have never told me the truth—why? Sometimes you were here all day long and you read or you opened the window or you cooked something—and I watched you—and you never said anything—and you looked at me with such eyes, as though you did not see me. All day, while I worked to make this room for you.'

I said nothing. I looked beyond Giovanni's head at the square windows which held back the feeble moonlight.

'What are you doing all the time? And why do you say nothing? You are evil, you know, and sometimes when you smiled at me I hated you. I wanted to strike you. I wanted to make you bleed. You smiled at me the way you smiled at everyone, you told me what you told everyone—and you tell nothing but lies. What are you always hiding? And do you think I did not know when you made love to me, you were making love to no one? No one! Or everyone—but not me, certainly. I am nothing to you, nothing, and you bring me fever but no delight.'

I moved, looking for a cigarette. They were in my hand. I lit one. In a moment, I thought, I will say something. I will say something and then I will walk out of this room forever.

'You know I cannot be alone. I have told you. What is the matter? Can we never have a life together?'

He began to cry again. I watched the hot tears roll from the corners of his eyes onto the dirty pillow.

'If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.'

I wanted to say so many things. Yet, when I opened my mouth, I made no sound. And yet—I do not know what I felt for Giovanni. I felt nothing for Giovanni. I felt terror and pity and a rising lust.

He took my cigarette from my lips and puffed on it, sitting up in bed, his hair in his eyes again.

'I have never known anyone like you before. I was never like this before you came. Listen. In Italy I had a woman and she was very good to me. She loved me, she loved me, and she took care of me and she was always there when I came in from work, in from the vineyards, and there was never any trouble between us, never. I was young then and did not know the things I learned later or the terrible things you have taught me. I thought all women were like that. I thought all men were like me—I thought I was like all other men. I was not unhappy then and I was not lonely—for she was there—and I did not want to die. I wanted to stay forever in our village and work in the vineyards and drink the wine we made and make love to my girl. I have told you about my village—? It is very old and in the south, it is on a hill. At night, when we walked by the wall, the world seemed to fall down before us, the whole, far-off, dirty world. I did not ever want to see it. Once we made love under the wall.

'Yes, I wanted to stay there forever and eat much spaghetti and drink much wine and make many babies and grow fat. You would not have liked me if I had stayed. I can see you, many years from now, coming through our village in the ugly, fat, American motor car you will surely have by then and looking at me and looking at all of us and tasting our wine and shitting on us with those empty smiles Americans wear everywhere and which you wear all the time and driving off with a great roar of the motors and a great sound of tires and telling all the other Americans you meet that they must come and see our village because it is so picturesque. And you will have no idea of the life there, dripping and bursting and beautiful and terrible, as you have no idea of my life now. But I think I would have been happier there and I would not have minded your smiles. I would have had my life. I have lain here many nights, waiting for you to come home, and thought how far away is my village and how terrible it is to be in this cold city, among people whom I hate, where it is cold and wet and never dry and hot as it was there, and where Giovanni has no one to talk to, and no one to be with, and where he has found a lover who is neither man nor woman, nothing that I can know or touch. You do not know, do you, what it is like to lie awake at night and wait for someone to come home? But I am sure you do not know. You do not know anything. You do not know any of the terrible things—that is why you smile and dance the way you do and you think that the comedy you are playing with the short-haired, moon-faced little girl is love.'

He dropped the cigarette to the floor, where it lay burning faintly. He began to cry again. I looked at the room, thinking: I cannot bear it.

'I left my village one wild, sweet day. I will never forget that day. It was the day of my death—I wish it had been the day of my death. I remember the sun was hot and scratchy on the back of my neck as I walked the road away from my village and the road went upward and I walked bent over, I remember everything, the brown dust at my feet, and the little pebbles which rushed before me, and the short trees along the road and all the flat houses and all their colors under the sun. I remember I was weeping, but not as I am weeping now, much worse, more terrible—since I am with you, I cannot even cry as I cried then. That was the first time in my life that I wanted to die. I had just buried my baby in the churchyard where my father and my father's fathers were and I had left my girl screaming in my mother's house. Yes, I had made a baby but it was born dead. It was all grey and twisted when I saw it and it made no sound—and we spanked it on the buttocks and we sprinkled it with holy water and we prayed but it never made a sound, it was dead. It was a little boy, it would have been a wonderful, strong man, perhaps even the kind of man you and Jacques and Guillaume and all your disgusting band of fairies spend all your days and nights looking for, and dreaming of—but it was dead, it was my baby and we had made it, my girl and I, and it was dead. When I knew that it was dead I took our crucifix off the wall and I spat on it and I threw it on the floor and my mother and my girl screamed and I went out. We buried it right away, the next day, and then I left my village and I came to this city where surely God has punished me for all my sins and for spitting on His holy Son, and where I will surely die. I do not think that I will ever see my village again.'

I stood up. My head was turning. Salt was in my mouth. The room seemed to rock, as it had the first time I had come here, so many lifetimes ago. I heard Giovanni's moan behind me. 'Chéri. Mon très cher. Don't leave me. Please don't leave me.' I turned and held him in my arms staring above his head at the wall, at the man and woman on the wall who walked together among roses. He was sobbing, it would have been said, as though his heart would break. But I felt that it was my heart which was broken. Something had broken in me to make me so cold and so perfectly still and far away.

Still I had to speak.

'Giovanni,' I said. 'Giovanni.'

He began to be still, he was listening; I felt, unwillingly, not for the first time, the cunning of the desperate.

'Giovanni,' I said, 'you always knew that I would leave one day. You knew my fiancée was coming back to Paris.'

'You are not leaving me for her,' he said. 'You are leaving me for some other reason. You lie so much, you have come to believe all your own lies. But I, I have senses. You are not leaving me for a woman. If you were really in love with this little girl, you would not have had to be so cruel to me.'

'She's not a little girl,' I said. 'She's a woman and no matter what you think, I do love her...'

'You do not,' cried Giovanni, sitting up, 'love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror—you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it—man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap—and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.' He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. 'You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?'

'Giovanni, stop it! For God's sake, stop it! What in the world do you want me to do? I can't help the way I feel.'

'Do you know how you feel? Do you feel? What do you feel?'

'I feel nothing now,' I said, 'nothing. I want to get out of this room, I want to get away from you, I want to end this terrible scene.'

'You want to get away from me.' He laughed; he watched me; the look in his eyes was so bottomlessly bitter it was almost benevolent. 'At last you are beginning to be honest. And do you know why you want to get away from me?'

Inside me something locked. 'I—I cannot have a life with you,' I said.

'But you can have a life with Hella. With that moonfaced little girl who thinks babies come out of cabbages—or frigidaires, I am not acquainted with the mythology of your country. You can have a life with her.'

'Yes,' I said, wearily, 'I can have a life with her.' I stood up. I was shaking. 'What kind of life can we have in this room?—this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? All this love you talk about—isn't it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the laborer and bring home the money and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl. That's what you want. That's what you mean and that's all you mean when you say you love me. You say I want to kill you. What do you think you've been doing to me?'

'I am not trying to make you a little girl. If I wanted a little girl, I would be with a little girl.'

'Why aren't you? Isn't it just that you're afraid? And you take me because you haven't got the guts to go after a woman, which is what you really want?'

He was pale. 'You are the one who keeps talking about what I want. But I have only been talking about who I want.'

'But I'm a man,' I cried, 'a man! What do you think can happen between us?'

'You know very well,' said Giovanni, slowly, 'what can happen between us. It is for that reason you are leaving me.' He got up and walked to the window and opened it. 'Bon,' he said. He struck his fist once against the window sill. 'If I could make you stay, I would,' he shouted. 'If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.' He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. 'One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.'

'It's cold,' I said. 'Close the window.'

He smiled. 'Now that you are leaving—you want the windows closed. Bien sûr.' He closed the window and we stood staring at each other in the center of the room. 'We will not fight any more,' he said. 'Fighting will not make you stay. In French we have what is called une separation de corps—not a divorce, you understand, just a separation. Well. We will separate. But I know you belong with me. I believe, I must believe—that you will come back.'

'Giovanni,' I said, 'I'll not be coming back. You know I won't be back.'

He waved his hand. 'I said we would not fight any more. The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever. They do not recognize doom when they see it.' He produced a bottle from beneath the sink. 'Jacques left a bottle of cognac here. Let us have a little drink—for the road, as I believe you people say sometimes.'

I watched him. He carefully poured two drinks. I saw that he was shaking—with rage, or pain, or both.

He handed me my glass.

'A la tienne,' he said.

'A la tienne.'

We drank. I could not keep myself from asking: 'Giovanni. What are you going to do now?'

'Oh,' he said, 'I have friends. I will think of things to do. Tonight, for example, I shall have supper with Jacques. No doubt tomorrow night I shall also have supper with Jacques. He has become very fond of me. He thinks you are a monster.'

'Giovanni,' I said, helplessly, 'be careful. Please be careful.'

He gave me an ironical smile. 'Thank you,' he said. 'You should have given me that advice the night we met.'

That was the last time we really spoke to one another. I stayed with him until morning and then I threw my things into a bag and took them away with me, to Hella's place.

I will not forget the last time he looked at me. The morning light filled the room, reminding me of so many mornings and of the morning I had first come there. Giovanni sat on the bed, completely naked, holding a glass of cognac between his hands. His body was dead white, his face was wet and grey. I was at the door with my suitcase. With my hand on the knob, I looked at him. Then I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But this would have been too great a confession; any yielding at that moment would have locked me forever in that room with him. And in a way this was exactly what I wanted. I felt a tremor go through me, like the beginning of an earthquake, and felt, for an instant, that I was drowning in his eyes. His body, which I had come to know so well, glowed in the light and charged and thickened the air between us. Then something opened in my brain, a secret, noiseless door swung open, frightening me: it had not occurred to me until that instant that, in fleeing from his body, I confirmed and perpetuated his body's power over me. Now, as though I had been branded, his body was burned into my mind, into my dreams. And all this time he did not take his eyes from me. He seemed to find my face more transparent than a shop-window. He did not smile, he was neither grave, nor vindictive, nor sad; he was still. He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again—waiting, as one waits at a death-bed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen. I had to get out of there for my face showed too much, the war in my body was dragging me down. My feet refused to carry me over to him again. The wind of my life was blowing me away.

'Au revoir, Giovanni.'

'Au revoir, mon cher.'

I turned from him, unlocked the door. The weary exhale of his breath seemed to ruffle my hair and brush my brow like the very wind of madness. I walked down the short corridor, expecting every instant to hear his voice behind me, passed through the vestibule, passed the loge of the still sleeping concierge, into the morning streets. And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I'll weep for this. One of these days I'll start to cry.

At the corner, in a faint patch of the morning sun, I looked in my wallet to count my bus tickets. In the wallet I found three hundred francs, taken from Hella, my carte d'identité, my address in the United States, and paper, paper, scraps of paper, cards, photographs. On each piece of paper I found addresses, telephone numbers, memos of various rendezvous made and kept—or perhaps not kept—people met and remembered, or perhaps not remembered, hopes probably not fulfilled: certainly not fulfilled, or I would not have been standing on that street corner.

I found four bus tickets in my wallet and I walked to the arrêt. There was a policeman standing there, his blue hood, weighted, hanging down behind, his white club gleaming. He looked at me and smiled and cried, 'Ca va?'

'Oui, merci. And you?'

'Toujours. It's a nice day, no?'

'Yes.' But my voice trembled. 'The autumn is beginning.'

'C'est ça.' And he turned away, back to his contemplation of the boulevard. I smoothed my hair with my hand, feeling foolish for feeling shaken. I watched a woman pass, coming from the market, her string bag full; at the top, precariously, a litre of red wine. She was not young but she was clear-faced and bold, she had a strong, thick body and strong, thick hands. The policeman shouted something to her and she shouted back—something bawdy and good-natured. The policeman laughed; but refused to look at me again. I watched the woman continue down the street—home, I thought, to her husband, dressed in blue working clothes, dirty, and to her children. She passed the corner where the patch of sunlight fell and crossed the street. The bus came and the policeman and I, the only people waiting, got on—he stood on the platform, far from me. The policeman was not young, either, but he had a gusto which I admired. I looked out of the window and the streets rolled by. Ages ago, in another city, on another bus, I sat so at the windows, looking outward, inventing for each flying face which trapped my brief attention some life, some destiny, in which I played a part. I was looking for some whisper, or promise, of my possible salvation. But it seemed to me that morning that my ancient self had been dreaming the most dangerous dream of all.

The days that followed seemed to fly. It seemed to turn cold overnight. The tourists in their thousands disappeared, conjured away by time-tables. When one walked through the gardens, leaves fell about one's head and sighed and crashed beneath one's feet. The stone of the city, which had been luminous and changing, faded slowly, but with no hesitation, into simple grey stone again. It was apparent that the stone was hard. Daily, fishermen disappeared from the river until, one day, the river banks were clear. The bodies of young boys and girls began to be compromised by heavy underwear, by sweaters and mufflers, hoods and capes. Old men seemed older, old women slower. The colors on the river faded, the rain began, and the river began to rise. It was apparent that the sun would soon give up the tremendous struggle it cost her to get to Paris for a few hours every day.

'But it will be warm in the south,' I said.

The money had come. Hella and I were busy every day, on the track of a house in Eze, in Cagnes-sur-mer, in Vence, in Monte Carlo, in Antibes, in Grasse. We were scarcely ever seen in the quarter. We stayed in her room, we made love a lot, we went to the movies, and had long, frequently rather melancholy dinners in strange restaurants on the right bank. It is hard to say what produced this melancholy, which sometimes settled over us like the shadow of some vast, some predatory, waiting bird. I do not think that Hella was unhappy, for I had never before clung to her as I clung to her during that time. But perhaps she sensed, from time to time, that my clutch was too insistent to be trusted, certainly too insistent to last.

And from time to time, around the quarter, I ran into Giovanni. I dreaded seeing him, not only because he was almost always with Jacques, but also because, though he was often rather better dressed, he did not look well. I could not endure something at once abject and vicious which I began to see in his eyes, nor the way he giggled at Jacques' jokes, nor the mannerisms, a fairy's mannerisms, which he was beginning, sometimes, to affect. I did not want to know what his status was with Jacques; yet the day came when it was revealed to me in Jacques' spiteful and triumphant eyes. And Giovanni, during this short encounter, in the middle of the boulevard as dusk fell, with people hurrying all about us, was really amazingly giddy and girlish, and very drunk—it was as though he were forcing me to taste the cup of his humiliation. And I hated him for this.

The next time I saw him it was in the morning. He was buying a newspaper. He looked up at me insolently, into my eyes, and looked away. I watched him diminish down the boulevard. When I got home, I told Hella about it, trying to laugh.

Then I began to see him around the quarter without Jacques, with the street-boys of the quarter, whom he had once described to me as 'lamentable.' He was no longer so well dressed, he was beginning to look like one of them. His special friend among them seemed to be the same, tall, pock-marked boy, named Yves, whom I remembered having seen briefly, playing the pinball machine, and, later, talking to Jacques on that first morning in Les Halles. One night, quite drunk myself, and wandering about the quarter alone, I ran into this boy and bought him a drink. I did not mention Giovanni but Yves volunteered the information that he was not with Jacques any more. But it seemed that he might be able to get back his old job in Guillaume's bar. It was certainly not more than a week after this that Guillaume was found dead in the private quarters above his bar. strangled with the sash of his dressing gown.