4

The following afternoon I collided with Holly on the stairs. “You” she said, hurrying past with a package from the druggist. “There she is, on the verge of pneumonia. A hang-over out to here. And the mean reds on top of it.” I gathered from this that Mag Wildwood was still in the apartment, but she gave me no chance to explore her surprising sympathy. Over the weekend, mystery deepened. First, there was the Latin who came to my door: mistakenly, for he was inquiring after Miss Wildwood. It took a while to correct his error, our accents seemed mutually incoherent, but by the time we had I was charmed. He’d been put together with care, his brown head and bullfighter’s figure had an exactness, a perfection, like an apple, an orange, something nature has made just right. Added to this, as decoration, were an English suit and a brisk cologne and, what is still more unlatin, a bashful manner. The second event of the day involved him again. It was toward evening, and I saw him on my way out to dinner. He was arriving in a taxi; the driver helped him totter into the house with a load of suitcases. That gave me something to chew on: by Sunday my jaws were quite tired.

Then the picture became both darker and clearer.

Sunday was an Indian summer day, the sun was strong, my window was open, and I heard voices on the fire escape. Holly and Mag were sprawled there on a blanket, the cat between them. Their hair, newly washed, hung lankly. They were busy, Holly varnishing her toenails, Mag knitting on a sweater. Mag was speaking.

“If you ask me, I think you’re l-l-lucky. At least there’s one thing you can say for Rusty. He’s an American.”

“Bully for him.”

“Sugar. There’s a war on.”

“And when it’s over, you’ve seen the last of me, boy.”

“I don’t feel that way. I’m p-p-proud of my country. The men in my family were great soldiers. There’s a statue of Papadaddy Wildwood smack in the center of Wildwood.”

“Fred’s a soldier,” said Holly. “But I doubt if he’ll ever be a statue. Could be. They say the more stupid you are the braver. He’s pretty stupid.”

“Fred’s that boy upstairs? I didn’t realize he was a soldier. But he does look stupid.”

“Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid. Anyhow, he’s a different Fred. Fred’s my brother.”

“You call your own f-f-flesh and b-b-blood stupid?”

“If he is he is.”

“Well, it’s poor taste to say so. A boy that’s fighting for you and me and all of us.”

“What is this: a bond rally?”

“I just want you to know where I stand. I appreciate a joke, but underneath I’m a s-s-serious person. Proud to be an American. That’s why I’m sorry about José.” She put down her knitting needles. “You do think he’s terribly good-looking, don’t you?” Holly said Hmn, and swiped the cat’s whiskers with her lacquer brush. “If only I could get used to the idea of m-m-marrying a Brazilian. And being a B-b-brazilian myself. It’s such a canyon to cross. Six thousand miles, and not knowing the language –”

“Go to Berlitz.”

“Why on earth would they be teaching P-p-portu-guese? It isn’t as though anyone spoke it. No, my only chance is to try and make José forget politics and become an American. It’s such a useless thing for a man to want to be: the p-p-president of Brazil.” She sighed and picked up her knitting. “I must be madly in love. You saw us together. Do you think I’m madly in love?”

“Well. Does he bite?”

Mag dropped a stitch. “Bite?”

“You. In bed.”

“Why, no. Should he?” Then she added, censoriously: “But he does laugh.”

“Good. That’s the right spirit. I like a man who sees the humor; most of them, they’re all pant and puff.”

Mag withdrew her complaint; she accepted the comment as flattery reflecting on herself. “Yes. I suppose.”

“Okay. He doesn’t bite. He laughs. What else?”

Mag counted up her dropped stitch and began again, knit, purl, purl.

“I said — ”

“I heard you. And it isn’t that I don’t want to tell you. But it’s so difficult to remember. I don’t d-d-dwell on these things. The way you seem to. They go out of my head like a dream. I’m sure that’s the n-n-normal attitude.”

“It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.” Holly paused in the process of reddening the rest of the cat’s whiskers. “Listen. If you can’t remember, try leaving the lights on.”

“Please understand me, Holly. I’m a very-very-very conventional person.”

“Oh, balls. What’s wrong with a decent look at a guy you like? Men are beautiful, a lot of them are, José is, and if you don’t even want to look at him, well, I’d say he’s getting a pretty cold plate of macaroni.”

“L-l-lower your voice.”

“You can’t possibly be in love with him. Now. Does that answer your question?”

“No. Because I’m not a cold plate of m-m-macaroni. I’m a warm-hearted person. It’s the basis of my character.”

“Okay. You’ve got a warm heart. But if I were a man on my way to bed, I’d rather take along a hot-water bottle. It’s more tangible.”

“You won’t hear any squawks out of José,” she said complacently, her needles flashing in the sunlight. “What’s more, I am in love with him. Do you realize I’ve knitted ten pairs of Argyles in less than three months? And this is the second sweater.” She stretched the sweater and tossed it aside. “What’s the point, though? Sweaters in Brazil. I ought to be making s-s-sun helmets.”

Holly lay back and yawned. “It must be winter sometime.”

“It rains, that I know. Heat. Rain. J-j-jungles.”

“Heat. Jungles. Actually, I’d like that.”

“Better you than me.”

“Yes,” said Holly, with a sleepiness that was not sleepy. “Better me than you.”

*  *  *  *  *

On Monday, when I went down for the morning mail, the card on Holly’s box had been altered, a name added: Miss Golightly and Miss Wildwood were now traveling together. This might have held my interest longer except for a letter in my own mailbox. It was from a small university review to whom I’d sent a story. They liked it; and, though I must understand they could not afford to pay, they intended to publish. Publish: that meant print. Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase. I had to tell someone: and, taking the stairs two at a time, I pounded on Holly’s door.

I didn’t trust my voice to tell the news; as soon as she came to the door, her eyes squinty with sleep, I thrust the letter at her. It seemed as though she’d had time to read sixty pages before she handed it back. “I wouldn’t let them do it, not if they don’t pay you,” she said, yawning. Perhaps my face explained she’d misconstrued, that I’d not wanted advice but congratulations: her mouth shifted from a yawn into a smile. “Oh, I see. It’s wonderful. Well, come in,” she said. “Well make a pot of coffee and celebrate. No. I’ll get dressed and take you to lunch.”

Her bedroom was consistent with her parlor: it perpetuated the same camping-out atmosphere; crates and suitcases, everything packed and ready to go, like the belongings of a criminal who feels the law not far behind. In the parlor there was no conventional furniture, but the bedroom had the bed itself, a double one at that, and quite flashy: blond wood, tufted satin.

She left the door of the bathroom open, and conversed from there; between the flushing and the brushing, most of what she said was unintelligible, but the gist of it was: she supposed I knew Mag Wildwood had moved in and wasn’t that convenient? because if you’re going to have a roommate, and she isn’t a dyke, then the next best thing is a perfect fool, which Mag was, because then you can dump the lease on them and send them out for the laundry.

One could see that Holly had a laundry problem; the room was strewn, like a girl’s gymnasium.

“– and you know, she’s quite a successful model: isn’t that fantastic! But a good thing,” she said, hobbling out of the bathroom as she adjusted a garter. “It ought to keep her out of my hair most of the day. And there shouldn’t be too much trouble on the man front. She’s engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there’s a tiny difference in height: I’d say a foot, her favor. Where the hell — ” She was on her knees poking under the bed. After she’d found what she was looking for, a pair of lizard shoes, she had to search for a blouse, a belt, and it was a subject to ponder, how, from such wreckage, she evolved the eventual effect: pampered, calmly immaculate, as though she’d been attended by Cleopatra’s maids. She said, “Listen,” and cupped her hand under my chin, “I’m glad about the story. Really I am.”

*  *  *  *  *

That Monday in October, 1943. A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird. To start, we had Manhattans at Joe Bell’s; and, when he heard of my good luck, champagne cocktails on the house. Later, we wandered toward Fifth Avenue, where there was a parade. The flags in the wind, the thump of military bands and military feet, seemed to have nothing to do with war, but to be, rather, a fanfare arranged in my personal honor.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria in the park. Afterwards, avoiding the zoo (Holly said she couldn’t bear to see anything in a cage), we giggled, ran, sang along the paths toward the old wooden boathouse, now gone. Leaves floated on the lake; on the shore, a park-man was fanning a bonfire of them, and the smoke, rising like Indian signals, was the only smudge on the quivering air. Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring; which is how I felt sitting with Holly on the railings of the boathouse porch. I thought of the future, and spoke of the past. Because Holly wanted to know about my childhood. She talked of her own, too; but it was elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital, though the impression received was contrary to what one expected, for she gave an almost voluptuous account of swimming and summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties: in short, happy in a way that she was not, and never, certainly, the background of a child who had run away.

Or, I asked, wasn’t it true that she’d been out on her own since she was fourteen? She rubbed her nose. “That’s true. The other isn’t. But really, darling, you made such a tragedy out of your childhood I didn’t feel I should compete.”

She hopped off the railing. “Anyway, it reminds me: I ought to send Fred some peanut butter.” The rest of the afternoon we were east and west worming out of reluctant grocers cans of peanut butter, a wartime scarcity; dark came before we’d rounded up a half-dozen jars, the last at a delicatessen on Third Avenue. It was near the antique shop with the palace of a bird cage in its window, so I took her there to see it, and she enjoyed the point, its fantasy: “But still, it’s a cage.”

Passing a Woolworth’s, she gripped my arm: “Let’s steal something,” she said, pulling me into the store, where at once there seemed a pressure of eyes, as though we were already under suspicion. “Come on. Don’t be chicken.” She scouted a counter piled with paper pumpkins and Halloween masks. The saleslady was occupied with a group of nuns who were trying on masks. Holly picked up a mask and slipped it over her face; she chose another and put it on mine; then she took my hand and we walked away. It was as simple as that. Outside, we ran a few blocks, I think to make it more dramatic; but also because, as I’d discovered, successful theft exhilarates. I wondered if she’d often stolen. “I used to,” she said. “I mean I had to. If I wanted anything. But I still do it every now and then, sort of to keep my hand in.” We wore the masks all the way home.

*  *  *  *  *

I have a memory of spending many hither and yonning days with Holly; and it’s true, we did at odd moments see a great deal of each other; but on the whole, the memory is false. Because toward the end of the month I found a job: what is there to add? The less the better, except to say it was necessary and lasted from nine to five. Which made our hours, Holly’s and mine, extremely different. Unless it was Thursday, her Sing Sing day, or unless she’d gone horseback riding in the park, as she did occasionally, Holly was hardly up when I came home. Sometimes, stopping there, I shared her wake-up coffee while she dressed for the evening. She was forever on her way out, not always with Rusty Trawler, but usually, and usually, too, they were joined by Mag Wildwood and the handsome Brazilian, whose name was José Ybarra-Jaegar: his mother was German. As a quartet, they struck an unmusical note, primarily the fault of Ybarra-Jaegar, who seemed as out of place in their company as a violin in a jazz band. He was intelligent, he was presentable, he appeared to have a serious link with his work, which was obscurely governmental, vaguely important, and took him to Washington several days a week. How, then, could he survive night after night in La Rue, El Morocco, listening to the Wildwood ch-ch-chatter and staring into Rusty’s raw baby-buttocks face? Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character. That would explain much; Holly’s determination explains the rest.

Late one afternoon, while waiting for a Fifth Avenue bus, I noticed a taxi stop across the street to let out a girl who ran up the steps of the Forty-second Street public library. She was through the doors before I recognized her, which was pardonable, for Holly and libraries were not an easy association to make. I let curiosity guide me between the lions, debating on the way whether I should admit following her or pretend coincidence. In the end I did neither, but concealed myself some tables away from her in the general reading room, where she sat behind her dark glasses and a fortress of literature she’d gathered at the desk. She sped from one book to the next, intermittently lingering on a page, always with a frown, as if it were printed upside down. She had a pencil poised above paper — nothing seemed to catch her fancy, still now and then, as though for the hell of it, she made laborious scribblings. Watching her, I remembered a girl I’d known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her stained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul — desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they’d been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left. Such profound observations made me forget where I was; I came to, startled to find myself in the gloom of the library, and surprised all over again to see Holly there. It was after seven, she was freshening her lipstick and perking up her appearance from what she deemed correct for a library to what, by adding a bit of scarf, some earrings, she considered suitable for the Colony. When she’d left, I wandered over to the table where her books remained; they were what I had wanted to see. South by Thunderbird. Byways of Brazil. The Political Mind of Latin America. And so forth.

On Christmas Eve she and Mag gave a party. Holly asked me to come early and help trim the tree. I’m still not sure how they maneuvered that tree into the apartment. The top branches were crushed against the ceiling, the lower ones spread wall-to-wall; altogether it was not unlike the yuletide giant we see in Rockefeller Plaza. Moreover, it would have taken a Rockefeller to decorate it, for it soaked up baubles and tinsel like melting snow. Holly suggested she run out to Woolworth’s and steal some balloons; she did: and they turned the tree into a fairly good show. We made a toast to our work, and Holly said: “Look in the bedroom. There’s a present for you.”

I had one for her, too: a small package in my pocket that felt even smaller when I saw, square on the bed and wrapped with a red ribbon, the beautiful bird cage. “But, Holly! It’s dreadful!”

“I couldn’t agree more; but I thought you wanted it.”

“The money! Three hundred and fifty dollars!”

She shrugged. “A few extra trips to the powder room. Promise me, though. Promise you’ll never put a living thing in it.”

I started to kiss her, but she held out her hand “Gimme,” she said, tapping the bulge in my pocket.

“I’m afraid it isn’t much,” and it wasn’t: a St. Christopher’s medal. But at least it came from Tiffany’s. Holly was not a girl who could keep anything, and surely by now she has lost that medal, left it in a suitcase or some hotel drawer. But the bird cage is still mine. I’ve lugged it to New Orleans, Nantucket, all over Europe, Morocco, the West Indies. Yet I seldom remember that it was Holly who gave it to me, because at one point I chose to forget: we had a big falling-out, and among the objects rotating in the eye of our hurricane were the bird cage and O.J. Berman and my story, a copy of which I’d given Holly when it appeared in the university review.

Sometime in February, Holly had gone on a winter trip with Rusty, Mag and José Ybarra-Jaegar. Our altercation happened soon after she returned. She was brown as iodine, her hair was sun-bleached to a ghost-color, she’d had a wonderful time: “Well, first of all we were in Key West, and Rusty got mad at some sailors, or vice versa, anyway he’ll have to wear a spine brace the rest of his life. Dearest Mag ended up in the hospital, too. First-degree sunburn. Disgusting: all blisters and citronella. We couldn’t stand the smell of her. So José and I left them in the hospital and went to Havana. He says wait till I see Rio; but as far as I’m concerned Havana can take my money right now. We had an irresistible guide, most of him Negro and the rest of him Chinese, and while I don’t go much for one or the other, the combination was fairly riveting: so I let him play kneesie under the table, because frankly I didn’t find him at all banal; but then one night he took us to a blue movie, and what do you suppose? There he was on the screen. Of course when we got back to Key West, Mag was positive I’d spent the whole time sleeping with José. So was Rusty: but he doesn’t care about that, he simply wants to hear the details. Actually, things were pretty tense until I had a heart-to-heart with Mag.”

We were in the front room, where, though it was now nearly March, the enormous Christmas tree, turned brown and scentless, its balloons shriveled as an old cow’s dugs, still occupied most of the space. A recognizable piece of furniture had been added to the room: an army cot; and Holly, trying to preserve her tropic look, was sprawled on it under a sun lamp.

“And you convinced her?”

“That I hadn’t slept with José? God, yes. I simply told — but you know: made it sound like an agonized confession — simply told her I was a dyke.”

“She couldn’t have believed that.”

“The hell she didn’t. Why do you think she went out and bought this army cot? Leave it to me: I’m always top banana in the shock department. Be a darling, darling, rub some oil on my back.” While I was performing this service, she said: “O.J. Berman’s in town, and listen, I gave him your story in the magazine. He was quite impressed. He thinks maybe you’re worth helping. But he says you’re on the wrong track. Negroes and children: who cares?”

“Not Mr. Berman, I gather.”

“Well, I agree with him. I read that story twice. Brats and niggers. Trembling leaves. Description. It doesn’t mean anything.”

My hand, smoothing oil on her skin, seemed to have a temper of its own: it yearned to raise itself and come down on her buttocks.

“Give me an example,” I said quietly. “Of something that means something. In your opinion.”

“Wuthering Heights,” she said, without hesitation.

The urge in my hand was growing beyond control. “But that’s unreasonable. You’re talking about a work of genius.”

“It was, wasn’t it? My wild sweet Cathy. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times.”

I said, “Oh” with recognizable relief, “oh” with a shameful, rising inflection, “the movie.”

Her muscles hardened, the touch of her was like stone warmed by the sun. “Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,” she said. “But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”

“I don’t compare myself to you. Or, Berman. Therefore I can’t feel superior. We want different things.”

“Don’t you want to make money?”

“I haven’t planned that far.”

“That’s how your stories sound. As though you’d written them without knowing the end. Well, I’ll tell you: I you’d better make money. You have an expensive imagination. Not many people are going to buy you bird cages.”

“Sorry.”

“You will be if you hit me. You wanted to a minute ago: I could feel it in your hand; and you want to now.”

I did, terribly; my hand, my heart was shaking as I recapped the bottle of oil. “Oh no, I wouldn’t regret that. I’m only sorry you wasted your money on me: Rusty Trawler is too hard a way of earning it.”

She sat up on the army cot, her face, her naked breasts coldly blue in the sun-lamp light. “It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I’ll give you two.”