Theophilus North (36 page)

“Oh, Bodo, don't ask me. It's only a hope.”

“Oh! Oh!—Give me a hint.”

“Do you know
Macbeth
?”

“I played in it at Eton. I was Macduff.”

“Do you remember Macbeth's question to the doctor about Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking?”

“Wait!—
‘Canst thou not . . . Pluck from the memory a rooted sorroiv
. . .?, and something about
‘Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?' ”

“Oh, Bodo!—That's what will win you Persis; that's what we must do for Agnese.”

He stared at me. He whispered, “Persis too? Did her husband die in a submarine?”

“Only the happiness that is snatched from suffering is real; all the rest is merely what they call ‘creature comforts.' ”

“Who said
that?
”

“One of your Austrian poets—Grillparzer, I think.”

“
Schön
!—I must run. Send me a note about where to pick up my guests and all that.
Ave atque vale
.”

The invitations were sent through Rosa and accepted. “Rosa, we would love to invite you and Filumena, too, but you know the size of his car.” Rosa's eyes showed she understood—perhaps understood the whole stratagem. “Will you show me, Rosa, where you put your hand on Mino's back to help him in and out of doorways and cars?”

Her mother watched us laughing. “I do'no w'at you are tinking now, Signor Teofilo, but I no afraid.”

The great day arrived. The weather was perfect. Mino was seated in the car by skilled hands. Agnese preferred to be picked up at the Materas' store, in order—I assumed—that her son's disappointment would not be enhanced by his longing to accompany her on an automobile ride. When we arrived at Brenton's Point that great hotel-man Baron Stams whisked out two portable service tables, spread them (with a flourish) with linen, and proceeded to uncork a bottle. Mino and Agnese remained in the car with trays on their laps while the other two cavaliers drew up beside them on folding chairs.

Mino said, “Now I can say that I've tasted champagne twice. I've tasted Asti Spumante at my brothers' weddings. The only time I had champagne before was at your wedding, Agnese.”

“You were only fifteen then, Mino. I'm glad you did.” She spoke like someone treading on ice. “My husband's family live in Albany, New York. They came and stayed at our house. They brought three bottles of champagne. . . . Do you remember Robert well, Mino?”

“I certainly do. His boat didn't come in to the Bay often, but he once asked me if I wanted to go on board and, of course, I was crazy to. But on that day there was a big storm blowing up and I couldn't have managed the ladders and the gangway. He told me he'd take me another time. He was my idol. My mother thought he was the handsomest man she'd ever seen—and the nicest.”

Agnese looked about her distraught.

Bodo asked, “Did the Navy give him special leave for the wedding?”

“Oh, he'd saved up his shore leave. We went to New York. We saw everything. We took a different El and a different subway to the end of the line every day. Robert knew that I loved music, so we went to the opera three times.” She turned to Mino and looked up into his face. “Of course, we had to sit way up high, but we could see and hear everything perfectly. And we went to the zoo and to Mass at St. Patrick's.” There were tears in her eyes, but she added with a little laugh, “We went to Coney Island too. That was fun, Mino.”

“Yes, Agnese.”

“Yes . . . Theophilus, what is Bodo doing?”

Bodo was busy over a chafing-dish. “I'm cooking supper, Agnese. It won't be ready for a while so have another glass of champagne.”

“I'm afraid that it'll make me tipsy.”

“It's not very strong.”

“Agnese,” I asked, “has Maestro del Valle given you any songs that you can sing without piano accompaniment? You know he wants you to sing if anyone asks you seriously. I can promise you we're all serious.”

“Well, there's an old Italian song. . . . Let me recall it a minute.”

She put her hand over her eyes and then sang
“Caro mio Ben, Caro mio Ben”
as purely as a swan gliding over the water. In the second verse she broke down. “I'm sorry I can't go on. That was one of the three songs he loved best. . . . Oh, Theophilus, oh, Bodo . . . he was such a good man! He was just a boy really and he loved life so much. Then that dreadful thing happened to him—under the ice, without food. I suppose they had water, didn't they? . . . but nothing to eat . . .”

Bodo started speaking, distinctly but without emphasis, his eyes on the work before him. “Agnese, during the War I lay in a ditch for four days without food. I was so wounded that I could not get up to look for water. I kept losing consciousness. When the doctors found me they said that I had died several times, but that I was smiling. You can be sure that the men in the boat—
with so little air
—lost consciousness. Air is more important than even food and water.”

She stared at him startled, a gleam of hope. She put her hand to her throat and murmured, “No air. No air.” Then she threw her arms about Mino; she laid her cheek on the lapel of his coat and sobbed, “Mino, comfort me! Comfort me!”

He put his arm around her and repeated, “Dear Agnese, beautiful Agnese . . . dear Agnese, brave Agnese . . .”

“Comfort me!”

Bodo and I stared at one another.

Suddenly Agnese collected herself, saying, “Forgive me, forgive me, everybody,” and drew a handkerchief from her handbag.

Bodo said loudly, “Supper's ready.”

Alice

During my earlier stay in Newport—at Fort Adams in 1918 and 1919—I had belonged to the Fourth City, that of the military and naval establishments. In this summer of 1926 there was little likelihood—nor did I seek any—that I would have any contact with those self-sufficient enclosures.

Yet I did come to know and delight in one very humble member-by-alliance of the United States Navy—Alice.

From time to time I am overcome by a longing for an Italian meal. I had received invitations to dinner at the homes of the Materas, the Avonzinos, and the Hilary Joneses, where I was promised an Italian meal; but the reader knows of my resolve to accept no invitations whatever. My life was so gregarious and fragmented that only a strict adherence to that rule could save me from something approaching breakdown. I ate alone. There were three restaurants in Newport purporting to be Italian, but like so many thousands in our country they offered sorry imitations of true Italian cooking. My favorite was “Mama Carlotta's” at One Mile Corner. There one was able to obtain, in a teacup, a home-grown wine popularly called “dago red.” About once in two weeks I wheeled the mile to “Mama Carlotta's” and ordered the
minestrone
, the
fettuccine con salsa
, and the bread; the bread was excellent.

This restaurant was across the road from one of the half-dozen entrances to the vast high-fenced Naval Base. It adjoined the many acres of barracks—six apartments to a house—in which lived the families of sailors many of whom worked at the Base, the majority of whom were often absent for many months at a time. Ulysses, King of Ithaca, was separated from his wife Penelope for twenty years—ten of them fighting on the plains before Troy, ten of them on the long voyage home. These men in Newport, their wives and children, lived in a densely crowded area of identical dwellings, identical streets, identical schools and playgrounds, and identical
conventions
. Since 1926 the area has grown many times in size, but with the increase of air travel home leave is granted more frequently and even the families are transported for a time to similar “compounds” in Hawaii, the Philippines, and elsewhere. In 1926 there were hundreds of “shore widows.” Density of population increases irritability, lonesomeness, and a censorious view of the behavior of others, all exacerbated at that time by walled enclosure. Penelope's was a hard lot and she must have been surrounded by the wives of absent seamen, but at least, being a queen, not
every
moment of her daily life was exposed to the eyes of women as unhappy as herself.

Residents on the Naval Base were permitted to leave the enclosure at will, but they seldom ventured into the town of Newport—they had their own provision stores, their own theaters, clubhouses, hospitals, doctors, and dentists. Civilian life did not interest and perhaps intimidated them. But they enjoyed escaping briefly from what they themselves called the “rabbit warren” and the “ghetto” to certain locations outside the walls. “Mama Carlotta's” was one of a group of restaurants and licit bars at One Mile Corner that they felt to be theirs. It consisted of two large parallel rooms, the bar and the restaurant. The bar was always crowded with men, though there were tables for ladies (who never came singly); the restaurant at noon and evening was generally well filled. The naval families seldom spent money for meals away from home, but occasionally when parents and relatives arrived for a visit they were offered the treat of a meal off the Base. A warrant officer or a chief petty officer came here, out into the world, to celebrate an anniversary. It is proverbial among the other services that professional seamen, from admirals down, marry good-looking women, not conspicuously intelligent, and that they find them in our southern states. I was able to confirm this rash generalization over and over again, notably at “Mama Carlotta's.”

Early one evening, soon after I had entered into possession of my apartment, I was enjoying a meal at “Mama Carlotta's.” It was my custom to read a paper or even a book at table. The fact that I was alone and reading was sufficient to mark me a landlubber. On this evening for reasons unknown I could not be served with wine and was drinking Bevo. I sat alone and exposed at a table for four, though the crowd was so great that the feminine portion of it had overflowed from the bar into the restaurant where it stood, two by two, glass in hand, engaged in animated conversation.

This chapter is about Alice. I never knew her married name. During the few hours I saw her I learned that she came from a large, often starving, family in the coal-mining region of West Virginia and that she had run away from home at the age of fifteen with a gentleman-friend. I shall not attempt to reproduce her accent nor to indicate fully the limitations of her education.

Alice and her friend Delia (from central Georgia) were standing, touching two of the empty chairs at my table. They were talking to be seen talking—not for my benefit only, but for the benefit of the public. Almost everyone in the room knew everyone else in the room and was keeping watch on everyone else in the room. As an author of a later day has said, “Hell is
they
.” I have unusually sharp hearing and became aware of an alteration in their tone. They had lowered their voices and were debating whether it would be “out of place” to ask me if they could sit in the empty chairs at my table. Presently the elder, Delia, turned to me and asked with chilly impersonality if the seats were taken.

I half-rose and said, “No, indeed, ladies. Please sit down.”

“Thank you.”

I was to learn later that even my partially rising from my chair was positively exciting. In the circles where they moved men did not under any occasion rise to acknowledge the presence of a woman; that was what gentlemen did in the movies, hence the excitement. I resumed my reading and lit a pipe. They turned their chairs face to face and continued their conversation in their earlier manner. They were discussing the election of a friend to the chairmanship of a committee responsible for supervising a charity bingo tournament. I had the sensation of listening to a scene from one of those old-fashioned plays wherein—for the audience's benefit—two characters inform one another of events long known to each of them.

It went on for some time. Delia was pointing out that it was ridiculous that a certain Dora had been elected. Dora, in a former high office, had made a perfect mess of organizing a farewell tea-party for a couple transferred to Panama; and so on.

“She tries to make herself popular by telling fortunes from palm-reading. Do you know what she told Julia Hackman?”

“No.” Some whispering. “Alice! You made that up!”

“Cross my heart to die.”

“Why, that's
terrible
!” (Stage laughter.)

“She'll do anything to get talked about. She said there was a Peeping Tom outside her bathroom; she opened the window suddenly and threw a soapy wet sponge in his face—in his
eyes
.”

“Alice! That's not true.”

“Delia, that's what she says. She'll say anything to get famous. That's the way she gets votes. Everybody knows her name.”

I had now the opportunity to observe them surreptitiously. Delia was the taller, dark and handsome, but discontented and even embittered; I took her to be about thirty. Alice was scarcely over five feet, about twenty-eight years old. She had a pretty, birdlike, pointed face, of a pallor that suggested ill-health. Under her hat some wisps of lusterless straw-colored hair could be seen. But all was rendered vivid by dark intelligent eyes and an almost breathless eagerness to extract enjoyment from life. Her drawbacks were two: her native intelligence led her into a constant irritation with those less quick of mind than herself; the other was an unprepossessing figure which, like her pallor, was probably the result of malnutrition in childhood. In spite of the difference in their ages Alice exerted an ascendancy over her friend.