Загадочная история Бенджамина Баттона / The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
“Give up and get down! You tried to buck me and I called your bluff. You see you haven’t got a prayer.”
And some last energy rose up in Bernice, for she clinched her hands under the white cloth, and there was a curious narrowing of her eyes that Marjorie remarked on to some one long afterward.
Twenty minutes later the barber swung her round to face the mirror, and she flinched at the full extent of the damage that had been wrought. Her hair was not curls and now it lay in lank lifeless blocks on both sides of her suddenly pale face. It was ugly as sin – she had known it would be ugly as sin. Her face’s chief charm had been a Madonna-like simplicity. Now that was gone and she was – well frightfully mediocre – not stagy; only ridiculous, like a Greenwich Villager who had left her spectacles at home.
As she climbed down from the chair she tried to smile – failed miserably. She saw two of the girls exchange glances; noticed Marjorie’s mouth curved in attenuated mockery – and that Warren’s eyes were suddenly very cold.
“You see,”– her words fell into an awkward pause- ”I’ve done it.”
“Yes, you’ve – done it,” admitted Warren.
“Do you like it?”
There was a half-hearted “Sure” from two or three voices, another awkward pause, and then Marjorie turned swiftly and with serpentlike intensity to Warren.
“Would you mind running me down to the cleaners?” she asked. “I’ve simply got to get a dress there before supper. Roberta’s driving right home and she can take the others.”
Warren stared abstractedly at some infinite speck out the window. Then for an instant his eyes rested coldly on Bernice before they turned to Marjorie.
“Be glad to,” he said slowly.
VI
Bernice did not fully realize the outrageous trap that had been set for her until she met her aunt’s amazed glance just before dinner.
“Why Bernice!”
“I’ve bobbed it, Aunt Josephine.”
“Why, child!”
“Do you like it?”
“Why Bernice!”
“I suppose I’ve shocked you.”
“No, but what’ll Mrs. Deyo think tomorrow night? Bernice, you should have waited until after the Deyo’s dance – you should have waited if you wanted to do that.”
“It was sudden, Aunt Josephine. Anyway, why does it matter to Mrs. Deyo particularly?”
“Why child,” cried Mrs. Harvey, “in her paper on ‘The Foibles of the Younger Generation’ that she read at the last meeting of the Thursday Club she devoted fifteen minutes to bobbed hair. It’s her pet abomination. And the dance is for you and Marjorie!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Bernice, what’ll your mother say? She’ll think I let you do it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dinner was an agony. She had made a hasty attempt with a curling-iron, and burned her finger and much hair. She could see that her aunt was both worried and grieved, and her uncle kept saying, “Well, I’ll be darned!” over and over in a hurt and faintly hostile torte. And Marjorie sat very quietly, intrenched behind a faint smile, a faintly mocking smile.
Somehow she got through the evening. Three boy’s called; Marjorie disappeared with one of them, and Bernice made a listless unsuccessful attempt to entertain the two others – sighed thankfully as she climbed the stairs to her room at half past ten. What a day!
When she had undressed for the night the door opened and Marjorie came in.
“Bernice,” she said “I’m awfully sorry about the Deyo dance. I’ll give you my word of honor I’d forgotten all about it.”
“’Sall right,” said Bernice shortly.
Standing before the mirror she passed her comb slowly through her short hair.
“I’ll take you down-town tomorrow,” continued Marjorie, “and the hairdresser’ll fix it so you’ll look slick. I didn’t imagine you’d go through with it. I’m really mighty sorry.”
“Oh, ’sall right!”
“Still it’s your last night, so I suppose it won’t matter much.”
Then Bernice winced as Marjorie tossed her own hair over her shoulders and began to twist it slowly into two long blond braids until in her cream-colored negligee she looked like a delicate painting of some Saxon princess. Fascinated, Bernice watched the braids grow. Heavy and luxurious they were moving under the supple fingers like restive snakes – and to Bernice remained this relic and the curling-iron and a tomorrow full of eyes. She could see G. Reece Stoddard, who liked her, assuming his Harvard manner and telling his dinner partner that Bernice shouldn’t have been allowed to go to the movies so much; she could see Draycott Deyo exchanging glances with his mother and then being conscientiously charitable to her. But then perhaps by to-morrow Mrs. Deyo would have heard the news; would send round an icy little note requesting that she fail to appear – and behind her back they would all laugh and know that Marjorie had made a fool of her; that her chance at beauty had been sacrificed to the jealous whim of a selfish girl. She sat down suddenly before the mirror, biting the inside of her cheek.
“I like it,” she said with an effort. “I think it’ll be becoming.”
Marjorie smiled.
“It looks all right. For heaven’s sake, don’t let it worry you!”
“I won’t.”
“Good night Bernice.”
But as the door closed something snapped within Bernice. She sprang dynamically to her feet, clinching her hands, then swiftly and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing. Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly, but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped her pick out.
Sitting down at her desk she wrote a short note to Mrs. Harvey, in which she briefly outlined her reasons for going. She sealed it, addressed it, and laid it on her pillow. She glanced at her watch. The train left at one, and she knew that if she walked down to the Marborough Hotel two blocks away she could easily get a taxicab.
Suddenly she drew in her breath sharply and an expression flashed into her eyes that a practiced character reader might have connected vaguely with the set look she had worn in the barber’s chair – somehow a development of it. It was quite a new look for Bernice – and it carried consequences.
She went stealthily to the bureau, picked up an article that lay there, and turning out all the lights stood quietly until her eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Softly she pushed open the door to Marjorie’s room. She heard the quiet, even breathing of an untroubled conscience asleep.
She was by the bedside now, very deliberate and calm. She acted swiftly. Bending over she found one of the braids of Marjorie’s hair, followed it up with her hand to the point nearest the head, and then holding it a little slack so that the sleeper would feel no pull, she reached down with the shears and severed it. With the pigtail in her hand she held her breath. Marjorie had muttered something in her sleep. Bernice deftly amputated the other braid, paused for an instant, and then flitted swiftly and silently back to her own room.
Downstairs she opened the big front door, closed it carefully behind her, and feeling oddly happy and exuberant stepped off the porch into the moonlight, swinging her heavy grip like a shopping-bag. After a minute’s brisk walk she discovered that her left hand still held the two blond braids. She laughed unexpectedly – had to shut her mouth hard to keep from emitting an absolute peal. She was passing Warren’s house now, and on the impulse she set down her baggage, and swinging the braids like piece of rope flung them at the wooden porch, where they landed with a slight thud.
She laughed again, no longer restraining herself.
“Huh,” she giggled wildly. “Scalp the selfish thing!”
Then picking up her staircase she set off at a half-run down the moonlit street.
On your own
I
The third time he walked around the deck Evelyn stared at him. She stood leaning against the bulwark and when she heard his footsteps again she turned frankly and held his eyes for a moment until his turned away, as a woman can when she has the protection of other men’s company, Barlotto, playing ping-pong with Eddie O’Sullivan, noticed the encounter.
“Aha!” he said, before the stroller was out of hearing, and when the rally was finished: “Then you’re still interested even if it’s not the German Prince.”
“How do you know it’s not the German Prince?” Evelyn demanded.
“Because the German Prince is the horse-faced man with white eyes. This one”-he took a passenger list from his pocket-“is either Mr George Ives, Mr Jubal Early Robbins and valet, or Mr Joseph Widdle with Mrs Widdle and six children.”
It was a medium-sized German boat, five days westbound from Cherbourg. The month was February and the sea was dingy grey and swept with rain. Canvas sheltered all the open portions of the promenade deck, even the ping-pong table was wet.
K’tap K’tap K’tap K’tap. Barlotto looked like Valentino – since he got fresh in the rumba number she had disliked playing opposite him. But Eddie O’Sullivan had been one of her best friends in the company.
Subconsciously she was waiting for the solitary promenader to round the deck again but he didn’t. She faced about and looked at the sea through the glass windows; instantly her throat closed and she held herself dose to the wooden rail to keep her shoulders from shaking. Her thoughts rang aloud in her ears: “My father is dead – when I was little we would walk to town on Sunday morning, I in my starched dress, and he would buy the Washington paper and a cigar and he was so proud of his pretty little girl. He was always so proud of me – he came to New York to see me when I opened with the Marx Brothers and he told everybody in the hotel he was my father, even the elevator boys. I’m glad he did, it was so much pleasure for him, perhaps the best time he ever had since he was young. He would like it if he knew I was coming all the way from London.”
“Game and set,” said Eddie.
She turned around.
“We’ll go down and wake up the Barneys and have some bridge, eh?” suggested Barlotto.
Evelyn led the way, pirouetting once and again on the moist deck, then breaking into an “Off to Buffalo” against a sudden breath of wet wind. At the door she slipped and fell inward down the stair, saved herself by a perilous one-arm swing – and was brought up against the solitary promenader. Her mouth fell open comically – she balanced for a moment. Then the man said, “I beg your pardon,” in an unmistakably southern voice. She met his eyes again as the three of them passed on.
The man picked up Eddie O’Sullivan in the smoking room the next afternoon.
“Aren’t you the London cast of Chronic Affection?”
“We were until three days ago. We were going to run another two weeks but Miss Lovejoy was called to America so we closed.”
“The whole cast on board?”
The man’s curiosity was inoffensive, it was a really friendly interest combined with a polite deference to the romance of the theatre. Eddie O’Sullivan liked him.
“Sure, sit down. No, there’s only Barlotto, the juvenile, and Miss Lovejoy and Charles Barney, the producer, and his wife. We left in twenty-four hours – the others are coming on the Homeric.”
“I certainly did enjoy seeing your show. I’ve been on a trip around the world and I turned up in London two weeks ago just ready for something American – and you had it.”
An hour later Evelyn poked her head around the corner of the smoking-room door and found them there.
“Why are you hiding out on us?” she demanded. “Who’s going to laugh at my stuff? That bunch of card sharps down there?”
Eddie introduced Mr George Ives. Evelyn saw a handsome, well-built man of thirty with a firm and restless face. At the corners of his eyes two pairs of fine wrinkles indicated an effort to meet the world on some other basis than its own. On his pan George Ives saw a rather small dark-haired girl of twenty-six, burning with a vitality that could only be described as “professional”. Which is to say it was not amateur – it could never use itself up upon any one person or group. At moments it possessed her so entirely, turning every shade of expression, every casual gesture, into a thing of such moment that she seemed to have no real self of her own. Her mouth was made of two small intersecting cherries pointing off into a bright smile; she had enormous, dark brown eyes. She was not beautiful but it took her only about ten seconds to persuade people that she was. Her body was lovely with little concealed muscles of iron. She was in black now and overdressed – she was always very chic and a little overdressed.
“I’ve been admiring you ever since you hurled yourself at me yesterday afternoon,” he said.
“I had to make you some way or other, didn’t I? What’s a girl going to with herself on a boat – fish?”
They sat down.
“Have you been in England long?” George asked.
“About five years – I go bigger over there.” In its serious moments her voice had the ghost of a British accent. “I’m not really very good at anything – I sing a little, dance a little, down a little, so the English think they’re getting a bargain. In New York they want specialists.”
It was apparent that she would have preferred an equivalent popularity in New York.
Barney, Mrs Barney and Barlotto came into the bar.
“Aha!” Barlotto cried when George Ives was introduced. “She won’t believe he’s not the Prince.” He put his hand on George’s knee. “Miss Lovejoy was looking for the Prince the first day when she heard he was on board. We told her it was you.”
Evelyn was weary of Barlotto, weary of all of them, except Eddie O’Sullivan, though she was too tactful to have shown it when they were working together. She looked around. Save for two Russian priests playing chess their party was alone in the smoking-room – there were only thirty first-class passengers, with accommodations for two hundred. Again she wondered what sort of an America she was going back to. Suddenly the room depressed her – it was too big, too empty to fill and she felt the necessity of creating some responsive joy and gaiety around her.
“Let’s go down to my salon,” she suggested, pouring all her enthusiasm into her voice, making them a free and thrilling promise. “We’ll play the phonograph and send for the handsome doctor and the chief engineer and get them in a game of stud. I’ll be the decoy.”
As they went downstairs she knew she was doing this for the new man. She wanted to play to him, show him what a good time she could give people. With the phonograph wailing “You’re driving me crazy” she began building up a legend. She was a “gun moll” and the whole trip had been a frame to get Mr Ives into the hands of the mob. Her throaty mimicry flicked here and there from one to the other; two ship’s officers coming in were caught up in it and without knowing much English still understood the verve and magic of the impromptu performance. She was Anne Pennington, Helen Morgan, the effeminate waiter who came in for an order, she was everyone there in turn, and all in pace with the ceaseless music.
Later George Ives invited them all to dine with him in the upstairs restaurant that night. And as the party broke up and Evelyn’s eyes sought his approval he asked her to walk with him before dinner.
The deck was still damp, still canvassed in against the persistent of rain. The lights were a dim and murky yellow and blankets tumbled awry on empty deck chairs.
“You were a treat,” he said. “You’re like – Mickey Mouse.”
She took his arm and bent double over it with laughter.
“I like being Mickey Mouse. Look – there’s where I stood and stared you every time you walked around. Why didn’t you come around the fourth time?”
“I was embarrassed so I went up to the boat deck.”
As they turned at the bow there was a great opening of doors and a flooding out of people who rushed to the rail.
“They must have had a poor supper,” Evelyn said. “No – look!”
It was the Europa – a moving island of light. It grew larger minute by minute, swelled into a harmonious fairyland with music from its deck and searchlights playing on its own length. Through field-glasses they could discern figures lining the rail and Evelyn spun out the personal history of a man who was pressing his own pants in a cabin. Charmed they watched its sure matchless speed.
“Oh, Daddy, buy me that!” Evelyn cried, and then something suddenly broke inside her – the sight of beauty, the reaction to her late excitement choked her up and she thought vividly of her father. Without a word she went inside.
Two days later she stood with George Ives on the deck while the gaunt scaffolding of Coney Island slid by.
“What was Barlotto saying to you just now?” she demanded.
George laughed.
“He was saying just about what Barney said this afternoon, only he was more excited about it.”
She groaned.
“He said that you played with everybody – and that I was foolish if I thought this little boat flirtation meant anything – everybody had been through being in love with you and nothing ever came of it.”
“He wasn’t in love with me,” she protested. “He got fresh in a dance we had together and I called him for it.”
“Barney was wrought up too – said he felt like a father to you.”
“They make me tired,” she exclaimed. “Now they think they’re in love with me just because-”
“Because they see I am.”
“Because they think I’m interested in you. None of them were so eager until two days ago. So long as I make them laugh it’s all right but the minute I have any impulse of my own they all bustle up and think they’re being so protective. I suppose Eddie O’Sullivan will be next.”
“It was my fault telling them we found we lived only a few miles from each other in Maryland.”
“No, it’s just that I’m the only decent-looking girl on an eight-day boat, and the boys are beginning to squabble among themselves. Once they’re in New York they’ll forget I’m alive.”
Still later they were together when the city burst thunderously upon them in the early dusk – the high white range of lower New York swooping down like a strand of a bridge, rising again into uptown New York, hallowed with diadems of foamy light, suspended from the stars.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” Evelyn sobbed. “I cry so much lately. Maybe I’ve been handling a parrot.”
The German band started to play on deck but the sweeping majesty of the city made the inarch trivial and tinkling; after a moment it died away.
“Oh, God! It’s so beautiful,” she whispered brokenly.
If he had not been going south with her the affair would probably have ended an hour later in the customs shed. And as they rode south to Washington next day he receded for the moment and her father came nearer. He was just a nice American who attracted her physically – a little necking behind a lifeboat in the darkness. At the iron grating in the Washington station where their ways divided she kissed him good-bye and for the time forgot him altogether as her train shambled down into the low-forested clayland of southern Maryland. Screening her eyes with her hands Evelyn looked out upon the dark infrequent villages and the scattered farm lights. Rocktown was a shrunken little station and there was her brother with a neighbour’s Ford – she was ashamed that her luggage was so good against the exploded upholstery. She saw a star she knew and heard Negro laughter from out of the night; the breeze was cool but in it there was some smell she recognized – she was home.
At the service next day in the Rocktown churchyard, the sense that she was on a stage, that she was being watched, froze Evelyn’s grief – then it was over and the country doctor lay among a hundred Lovejoys and Dorseys and Crawshaws. It was very friendly leaving him there with all his relations around him. Then as they turned from the graveside her eyes fell on George Ives who stood a little apart with his hat in his hand. Outside the gate he spoke to her.
“You’ll excuse my coming. I had to see that you were all right.”
“Can’t you take me away somewhere now?” she asked impulsively. “I can’t stand much of this. I want to go to New York tonight.”
His face fell.
“So soon?”
“I’ve got to be learning a lot of new dance routines and freshening up my stuff. You get sort of stale abroad.”
He called for her that afternoon, crisp and shining as his coupe. As they started off she noticed that the men in the gasoline stations seemed to know him with liking and respect. He fitted into the quickening spring landscape, into a legendary Maryland of graciousness and gallantry. He had not the range of a European; he gave her little of that constant reassurance as to her attractiveness – there were whole half-hours when he seemed scarcely aware of her at all.
They stopped once more at the churchyard – she brought a great armful of flowers to leave as a last offering on her father’s grave. Leaving him at the gate she went in.
The flowers scattered on the brown unsettled earth. She had no more ties here now and she did not know whether she would come back any more. She knelt down. All these dead, she knew them all, their weather-beaten faces with hard blue flashing eyes, their spare violent bodies, their souls made of new earth in the long forest-heavy darkness of the seventeenth century. Minute by minute the spell grew on her until it was hard to struggle back to the old world where she had dined with kings and princes, where her name in letters two feet high challenged the curiosity of the night A line of William McFee’s surged through her:
O staunch old heart that toiled so long for me
I waste my years sailing along the sea.
The words released her – she broke suddenly and sat back on her heels, crying.
How long she was staying she didn’t know; the flowers had grown invisible when a voice called her name from the churchyard and she got up and wiped her eyes.
“I’m coming.” And then, “Good-bye then Father, all my fathers.”
George helped her into the car and wrapped a robe around her. Then he took a long drink of country rye from his flask.
“Kiss me before we start,” he said suddenly.
She put up her face towards him.
“No, really kiss me.”
“Not now.”
“Don’t you like me?”
“I don’t feel like it, and my face is dirty.”
“As if that mattered.”
His persistence annoyed her.
“Let’s go on,” she said.
He put the car into gear.
“Sing me a song.”
“Not now, I don’t feel like it.”
He drove fast for half an hour – then he stopped under thick sheltering trees.
“Time for another drink. Don’t you think you better have one – it’s getting cold.”
“You know I don’t drink. You have one.”
“If you don’t mind.”
When he had swallowed he turned towards her again.
“I think you might kiss me now.”
Again she kissed him obediently but he was not satisfied.
“I mean really,” he repeated. “Don’t hold away like that. You know I’m in love with you and you say you like me.”
“Of course I do,” she said impatiently, “but there are times and times. This isn’t one of them. Let’s go on.”
“But I thought you liked me.”
“I won’t if you act this way.”
“You don’t like me then.”
“Oh don’t be absurd,” she broke out, “of course I like you, but I want to get to Washington.”
“We’ve got lots of time.” And then as she didn’t answer, “Kiss me once before we start.”
She grew angry. If she had liked him less she could have laughed him out of this mood. But there was no laughter in her – only an increasing distaste for the situation.
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “this car is very stubborn. It refuses to start until you kiss me.” He put his hand on hers but she drew hers away.
“Now look here.” Her temper mounted into her cheeks, her forehead. “If there was anything you could do to spoil everything it was just this. I thought people only acted like this in cartoons. It’s so utterly crude and”-she searched for a word-“and American. You only forgot to call me „baby“.”
“Oh.” After a minute he started the engine and then the car. The lights of Washington were a red blur against the sky. “Evelyn,” he said presently. “I can’t think of anything more natural than wanting to kiss you, I-”