For Esmé, With Love and Squalor Read online

  I said I certainly had been, and that I had heard her voice singing separately from the others. I said I thought she had a very fine voice.

  She nodded. “I know. I’m going to be a professional singer.”

  “Really? Opera?”

  “Heavens, no. I’m going to sing jazz on the radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I’m thirty, I shall retire and live on a ranch in Ohio.” She touched the top of her soaking-wet head with the flat of her hand. “Do you know Ohio?” she asked.

  I said I’d been through it on the train a few times but that I didn’t really know it. I offered her a piece of cinnamon toast.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I eat like a bird, actually.”

  I bit into a piece of toast myself, and commented that there’s some mighty rough country around Ohio. “I know. An American I met told me. You’re the eleventh American I’ve met.”

  Her governess was now urgently signalling her to return to her own table—in effect, to stop bothering the man. My guest, however, calmly moved her chair an inch or two so that her back broke all possible further communication with the home table. “You go to that secret Intelligence school on the hill, don’t you?” she inquired coolly.

  As security-minded as the next one, I replied that I was visiting Devonshire for my health.

  “Really,” she said, “I wasn’t quite born yesterday, you know.”

  I said I’d bet she hadn’t been, at that. I drank my tea for a moment. I was getting a trifle posture-conscious and I sat up somewhat straighter in my seat.

  “You seem quite intelligent for an American,” my guest mused.

  I told her that was a pretty snobbish thing to say, if you thought about it at all, and that I hoped it was unworthy of her.

  She blushed—automatically conferring on me the social poise I’d been missing. “Well. Most of the Americans I’ve seen act like animals. They’re forever punching one another about, and insulting everyone, and—You know what one of them did?”

  I shook my head.

  “One of them threw an empty whiskey bottle through my aunt’s window. Fortunately, the window was open. But does that sound very intelligent to you?”

  It didn’t especially, but I didn’t say so. I said that many soldiers, all over the world, were a long way from home, and that few of them had had many real advantages in life. I said I’d thought that most people could figure that out for themselves.

  “Possibly,” said my guest, without conviction. She raised her hand to her wet head again, picked at a few limp filaments of blond hair, trying to cover her exposed ear rims. “My hair is soaking wet,” she said. “I look a fright.” She looked over at me. “I have quite wavy hair when it’s dry.”

  “I can see that, I can see you have.”

  “Not actually curly, but quite wavy,” she said. “Are you married?”

  I said I was.

  She nodded. “Are you very deeply in love with your wife? Or am I being too personal?”

  I said that when she was, I’d speak up.

  She put her hands and wrists farther forward on the table, and I remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced wristwatch she was wearing—perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist.

  “Usually, I’m not terribly gregarious,” she said, and looked over at me to see if I knew the meaning of the word. I didn’t give her a sign, though, one way or the other. “I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face.”

  I said she was right, that I had been feeling lonely, and that I was very glad she’d come over.

  “I’m training myself to be more compassionate. My aunt says I’m a terribly cold person,” she said and felt the top of her head again. “I live with my aunt. She’s an extremely kind person. Since the death of my mother, she’s done everything within her power to make Charles and me feel adjusted.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Mother was an extremely intelligent person. Quite sensuous, in many ways.” She looked at me with a kind of fresh acuteness. “Do you find me terribly cold?”

  I told her absolutely not—very much to the contrary, in fact. I told her my name and asked for hers. She hesitated. “My first name is Esmé. I don’t think I shall tell you my full name, for the moment. I have a title and you may just be impressed by titles. Americans are, you know.”

  I said I didn’t think I would be, but that it might be a good idea, at that, to hold on to the title for a while.

  Just then, I felt someone’s warm breath on the back of my neck. I turned around and just missed brushing noses with Esmé’s small brother. Ignoring me, he addressed his sister in a piercing treble: “Miss Megley said you must come and finish your tea!” His message delivered, he retired to the chair between his sister and me, on my right. I regarded him with high interest. He was looking very splendid in brown Shetland shorts, a navy-blue jersey, white shirt, and striped necktie. He gazed back at me with immense green eyes. “Why do people in films kiss sideways?” he demanded.

  “Sideways?” I said. It was a problem that had baffled me in my childhood. I said I guessed it was because actors’ noses are too big for kissing anyone head on.

  “His name is Charles,” Esmé said. “He’s extremely brilliant for his age.”

  “He certainly has green eyes. Haven’t you, Charles?” Charles gave me the fishy look my question deserved, then wriggled downward and forward in his chair till all of his body was under the table except his head, which he left, wrestler’s-bridge style, on the chair seat. “They’re orange,” he said in a strained voice, addressing the ceiling. He picked up a comer of the tablecloth and put it over his handsome, deadpan little face.

  “Sometimes he’s brilliant and sometimes he’s not,” Esmé said. “Charles, do sit up!”

  Charles stayed right where he was. He seemed to be holding his breath.

  “He misses our father very much. He was s-l-a-i-n in North Africa.”

  I expressed regret to hear it.

  Esmé nodded. “Father adored him.” She bit reflectively at the cuticle of her thumb. “He looks very much like my mother—Charles, I mean. I look exactly like my father.” She went on biting at her cuticle. “My mother was quite a passionate woman. She was an extrovert. Father was an introvert. They were quite well mated, though, in a superficial way. To be quite candid, Father really needed more of an intellectual companion than Mother was. He was an extremely gifted genius.”

  I waited, receptively, for further information, but none came. I looked down at Charles, who was now resting the side of his face on his chair seat. When he saw that I was looking at him, he closed his eyes, sleepily, angelically, then stuck out his tongue—an appendage of startling length—and gave out what in my country would have been a glorious tribute to a myopic baseball umpire. It fairly shook the tearoom.

  “Stop that,” Esmé said, clearly unshaken. “He saw an American do it in a fish-and-chips queue, and now he does it whenever he’s bored. Just stop it, now, or I shall send you directly to Miss Megley.”

  Charles opened his enormous eyes, as sign that he’d heard his sister’s threat, but otherwise didn’t look especially alerted. He closed his eyes again, and continued to rest the side of his face on the chair seat.

  I mentioned that maybe he ought to save it—meaning the Bronx cheer—till he started using his title regularly. That is, if he had a title, too.

  Esmé gave me a long, faintly clinical look. “You have a dry sense of humor, haven’t you?” she said—wistfully. “Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to meet life because I have no sense of humor.”

  Watching her, I lit a cigarette and said I didn’t think a sense of humor was of any use in a real pinch.

  “Father said it was.”

  This was a statement of faith, not a contradiction, and I quickly switched horses.
I nodded and said her father had probably taken the long view, while I was taking the short (whatever that meant).

  “Charles misses him exceedingly,” Esmé said, after a moment. “He was an exceedingly lovable man. He was extremely handsome, too. Not that one’s appearance matters greatly, but he was. He had terribly penetrating eyes, for a man who was intransically kind.”

  I nodded. I said I imagined her father had had quite an extraordinary vocabulary.

  “Oh, yes; quite,” said Esmé. “He was an archivist—amateur, of course.”

  At that point, I felt an importunate tap, almost a punch, on my upper arm, from Charles’ direction. I turned to him. He was sitting in a fairly normal position in his chair now, except that he had one knee tucked under him. “What did one wall say to the other wall?” he asked shrilly. “It’s a riddle!”

  I rolled my eyes reflectively ceilingward and repeated the question aloud. Then I looked at Charles with a stumped expression and said I gave up.

  “Meet you at the corner!” came the punch line, at top volume.

  It went over biggest with Charles himself. It struck him as unbearably funny. In fact, Esmé had to come around and pound him on the back, as if treating him for a coughing spell. “Now, stop that,” she said. She went back to her own seat. “He tells that same riddle to everyone he meets and has a fit every single time. Usually he drools when he laughs. Now, just stop, please.”

  “It’s one of the best riddles I’ve heard, though,” I said, watching Charles, who was very gradually coming out of it. In response to this compliment, he sank considerably lower in his chair and again masked his face up to the eyes with a corner of the tablecloth. He then looked at me with his exposed eyes, which were full of slowly subsiding mirth and the pride of someone who knows a really good riddle or two.

  “May I inquire how you were employed before entering the Army?” Esmé asked me.

  I said I hadn’t been employed at all, that I’d only been out of college a year but that I like to think of myself as a professional short-story writer.

  She nodded politely. “Published?” she asked.

  It was a familiar but always touchy question, and one that I didn’t answer just one, two, three. I started to explain how most editors in America were a bunch—

  “My father wrote beautifully,” Esmé interrupted. “I’m saving a number of his letters for posterity.”

  I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be looking at her enormous-faced, chronographic-looking wristwatch again. I asked if it had belonged to her father.

  She looked down at her wrist solemnly. “Yes, it did,” she said. “He gave it to me just before Charles and I were evacuated.” Self-consciously, she took her hands off the table, saying, “Purely as a momento, of course.” She guided the conversation in a different direction. “I’d be extremely flattered if you’d write a story exclusively for me sometime. I’m an avid reader.”

  I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said that I wasn’t terribly prolific.

  “It doesn’t have to be terribly prolific! Just so that it isn’t childish and silly.” She reflected. “I prefer stories about squalor.”

  “About what?” I said, leaning forward. “Squalor. I’m extremely interested in squalor.”

  I was about to press her for more details, but I felt Charles pinching me, hard, on my arm. I turned to him, wincing slightly. He was standing right next to me. “What did one wall say to the other wall?” he asked, not unfamiliarly.

  “You asked him that,” Esmé said. “Now, stop it.”

  Ignoring his sister, and stepping up on one of my feet, Charles repeated the key question. I noticed that his necktie knot wasn’t adjusted properly. I slid it up into place, then, looking him straight in the eye, suggested, “Meetcha at the corner?”

  The instant I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t. Charles’ mouth fell open. I felt as if I’d struck it open. He stepped down off my foot and, with white-hot dignity, walked over to his own table, without looking back.

  “He’s furious,” Esmé said. “He has a violent temper. My mother had a propensity to spoil him. My father was the only one who didn’t spoil him.”

  I kept looking over at Charles, who had sat down and started to drink his tea, using both hands on the cup. I hoped he’d turn around, but he didn’t.

  Esmé stood up. “Il faut que je parte aussi,” she said, with a sigh. “Do you know French?”

  I got up from my own chair, with mixed feelings of regret and confusion. Esmé and I shook hands; her hand, as I’d suspected, was a nervous hand, damp at the palm. I told her, in English, how very much I’d enjoyed her company.

  She nodded. “I thought you might,” she said. “I’m quite communicative for my age.” She gave her hair another experimental touch. “I’m dreadfully sorry about my hair,” she said. “I’ve probably been hideous to look at.”

  “Not at all! As a matter of fact, I think a lot of the wave is coming back already.”

  She quickly touched her hair again. “Do you think you’ll be coming here again in the immediate future?” she asked. “We come here every Saturday, after choir practice.”

  I answered that I’d like nothing better but that, unfortunately, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to make it again.

  “In other words, you can’t discuss troop movements,” said Esmé. She made no move to leave the vicinity of the table. In fact, she crossed one foot over the other and, looking down, aligned the toes of her shoes. It was a pretty little execution, for she was wearing white socks and her ankles and feet were lovely. She looked up at me abruptly. “Would you like me to write to you?” she asked, with a certain amount of color in her face. “I write extremely articulate letters for a person my—”

  “I’d love it.” I took out pencil and paper and wrote down my name, rank, serial number, and A.P.O. number.

  “I shall write to you first,” she said, accepting it, “so that you don’t feel compromised in any way.” She put the address into a pocket of her dress. “Goodbye,” she said, and walked back to her table.

  I ordered another pot of tea and sat watching the two of them till they, and the harassed Miss Megley, got up to leave. Charles led the way out, limping tragically, like a man with one leg several, inches shorter than the other. He didn’t look over at me. Miss Megley went next, then Esmé, who waved to me. I waved back, half getting up from my chair. It was a strangely emotional moment for me.

  Less than a minute later, Esmé came back into the tearoom, dragging Charles behind her by the sleeve of his reefer. “Charles would like to kiss you goodbye,” she said.

  I immediately put down my cup, and said that was very nice, but was she sure?

  “Yes,” she said, a trifle grimly. She let go Charles’ sleeve and gave him a rather vigorous push in my direction. He came forward, his face livid, and gave me a loud, wet smacker just below the right ear. Following this ordeal, he started to make a beeline for the door and a less sentimental way of life, but 1 caught the half belt at the back of his reefer, held on to it, and asked him, “What did one wall say to the other wall?”

  His face lit up. “Meet you at the corner!” he shrieked, and raced out of the room, possibly in hysterics.

  Esmé was standing with crossed ankles again. “You’re quite sure you won’t forget to write that story for me?” she asked. “It doesn’t have to be exclusively for me. It can—”

  I said there was absolutely no chance that I’d forget. I told her that I’d never written a story for anybody, but that it seemed like exactly the right time to get down to it.

  She nodded. “Make it extremely squalid and moving,” she suggested. “Are you at all acquainted with squalor?”

  I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or another, all the time, and that I’d do my best to come up to her specifications. We shook hands.

  �
�Isn’t it a pity that we didn’t meet under less extenuating circumstances?”

  I said it was, I said it certainly was.

  “Goodbye,” Esmé said. “I hope you return from the war with all your faculties intact.”

  I thanked her, and said a few other words, and then watched her leave the tearoom. She left it slowly, reflectively, testing the ends of her hair for dryness.

  This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I’m still around, but from here on in, for reasons I’m not at liberty to disclose, I’ve disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.

  It was about ten-thirty at night in Gaufurt, Bavaria, several weeks after V-E Day. Staff Sergeant X was in his room on the second floor of the civilian home in which he and nine other American soldiers had been quartered, even before the armistice. He was seated on a folding wooden chair at a small, messy-looking writing table, with a paperback overseas novel open before him, which he was having great trouble reading. The trouble lay with him, not the novel. Although the men who lived on the first floor usually had first grab at the books sent each month by Special Services, X usually seemed to be left with the book he might have selected himself. But he was a young man who had not come through the war with all his faculties intact, and for more than an hour he had been triple-reading paragraphs, and now he was doing it to the sentences. He suddenly closed the book, without marking his place. With his hand, he shielded his eyes for a moment against the harsh, watty glare from the naked bulb over the table.

  He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit it with fingers that bumped gently and incessantly against one another. He sat back a trifle in his chair and smoked without any sense of taste. He had been chain-smoking for weeks. His gums bled at the slightest pressure of the tip of his tongue, and he seldom stopped experimenting; it was a little game he played, sometimes by the hour. He sat for a moment smoking and experimenting. Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack. He quickly did what he had been doing for weeks to set things right: he pressed his hands hard against his temples. He held on tight for a moment. His hair needed cutting, and it was dirty. He had washed it three or four times during his two weeks’ stay at the hospital in Frankfort on the Main, but it had got dirty again on the long, dusty jeep ride back to Gaufurt. Corporal Z, who had called for him at the hospital, still drove a jeep combat-style, with the windshield down on the hood, armistice or no armistice. There were thousands of new troops in Germany. By driving with his windshield down, combat-style, Corporal Z hoped to show that he was not one of them, that not by a long shot was he some new son of a bitch in the E.T.O.