“Why not, Dick? That was our original arrangement — it was you who insisted on staying. If you and Nicole —”
“I don’t want to go away with Nicole. I want to go away alone. This last thing knocked me sideways — if I get two hours’ sleep in twenty-four, it’s one of Zwingli’s miracles.”
“You wish a real leave of abstinence.”
“The word is ‘absence.’ Look here: if I go to Berlin to the Psychiatric Congress could you manage to keep the peace? For three months she’s been all right and she likes her nurse. My God, you’re the only human being in this world I can ask this of.”
Franz grunted2, considering whether or not he could be trusted to think always of his partner’s interest.
In Zurich the next week Dick drove to the airport and took the big plane for Munich. Soaring and roaring into the blue he felt numb3, realizing how tired he was. A vast persuasive4 quiet stole over him, and he abandoned sickness to the sick, sound to the motors, direction to the pilot. He had no intention of attending so much as a single session of the congress — he could imagine it well enough, new pamphlets by Bleuler and the elder Forel that he could much better digest at home, the paper by the American who cured dementia pr?cox by pulling out his patient’s teeth or cauterizing5 their tonsils, the half-derisive respect with which this idea would be greeted, for no more reason than that America was such a rich and powerful country. The other delegates from America — red-headed Schwartz with his saint’s face and his infinite patience in straddling two worlds, as well as dozens of commercial alienists with hang-dog faces, who would be present partly to increase their standing6, and hence their reach for the big plums of the criminal practice, partly to master novel sophistries7 that they could weave into their stock in trade, to the infinite confusion of all values. There would be cynical8 Latins, and some man of Freud’s from Vienna. Articulate among them would be the great Jung, bland9, super- vigorous, on his rounds between the forests of anthropology10 and the neuroses of school-boys. At first there would be an American cast to the congress, almost Rotarian in its forms and ceremonies, then the closer-knit European vitality11 would fight through, and finally the Americans would play their trump12 card, the announcement of colossal13 gifts and endowments, of great new plants and training schools, and in the presence of the figures the Europeans would blanch14 and walk timidly. But he would not be there to see.
They skirted the Vorarlberg Alps, and Dick felt a pastoral delight in watching the villages. There were always four or five in sight, each one gathered around a church. It was simple looking at the earth from far off, simple as playing grim games with dolls and soldiers. This was the way statesmen and commanders and all retired15 people looked at things. Anyhow, it was a good draft of relief.
An Englishman spoke16 to him from across the aisle17 but he found something antipathetic in the English lately. England was like a rich man after a disastrous18 orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them that he is only trying to get back his self-respect in order to usurp19 his former power.
Dick had with him what magazines were available on the station quays20: The Century, The Motion Picture, L’lllustration, and the Fliegende Bl?tter, but it was more fun to descend21 in his imagination into the villages and shake hands with the rural characters. He sat in the churches as he sat in his father’s church in Buffalo22, amid the starchy must of Sunday clothes. He listened to the wisdom of the Near East, was Crucified, Died, and was Buried in the cheerful church, and once more worried between five or ten cents for the collection plate, because of the girl who sat in the pew behind.
The Englishman suddenly borrowed his magazines with a little small change of conversation, and Dick, glad to see them go, thought of the voyage ahead of him. Wolf-like under his sheep’s clothing of long-staple Australian wool, he considered the world of pleasure — the incorruptible Mediterranean23 with sweet old dirt caked in the olive trees, the peasant girl near Savona with a face as green and rose as the color of an illuminated24 missal. He would take her in his hands and snatch her across the border . . .
. . . but there he deserted25 her — he must press on toward the Isles26 of Greece, the cloudy waters of unfamiliar27 ports, the lost girl on shore, the moon of popular songs. A part of Dick’s mind was made up of the tawdry souvenirs of his boyhood. Yet in that somewhat littered Five-and-Ten, he had managed to keep alive the low painful fire of intelligence.
XVII
Tommy Barban was a ruler, Tommy was a hero — Dick happened upon him in the Marienplatz in Munich, in one of those cafés, where small gamblers diced28 on “tapestry” mats. The air was full of politics, and the slap of cards.
Tommy was at a table laughing his martial29 laugh: “Um-buh — ha-ha! Um-buh — ha-ha!” As a rule, he drank little; courage was his game and his companions were always a little afraid of him. Recently an eighth of the area of his skull30 had been removed by a Warsaw surgeon and was knitting under his hair, and the weakest person in the café could have killed him with a flip31 of a knotted napkin.
“— this is Prince Chillicheff —” A battered32, powder-gray Russian of fifty, “— and Mr. McKibben — and Mr. Hannan —” the latter was a lively ball of black eyes and hair, a clown; and he said immediately to Dick:
“The first thing before we shake hands — what do you mean by fooling around with my aunt?”
“Why, I—”
“You heard me. What are you doing here in Munich anyhow?”
“Um-bah — ha-ha!” laughed Tommy.
“Haven’t you got aunts of your own? Why don’t you fool with them?”
Dick laughed, whereupon the man shifted his attack:
“Now let’s not have any more talk about aunts. How do I know you didn’t make up the whole thing? Here you are a complete stranger with an acquaintance of less than half an hour, and you come up to me with a cock-and-bull story about your aunts. How do I know what you have concealed33 about you?”
Tommy laughed again, then he said good-naturedly, but firmly, “That’s enough, Carly. Sit down, Dick — how’re you? How’s Nicole?”
He did not like any man very much nor feel their presence with much intensity34 — he was all relaxed for combat; as a fine athlete playing secondary defense35 in any sport is really resting much of the time, while a lesser36 man only pretends to rest and is at a continual and self-destroying nervous tension.
Hannan, not entirely37 suppressed, moved to an adjoining piano, and with recurring38 resentment39 on his face whenever he looked at Dick, played chords, from time to time muttering, “Your aunts,” and, in a dying cadence40, “I didn’t say aunts anyhow. I said pants.”
“Well, how’re you?” repeated Tommy. “You don’t look so —” he fought for a word, “— so jaunty41 as you used to, so spruce, you know what I mean.”
The remark sounded too much like one of those irritating accusations42 of waning43 vitality and Dick was about to retort by commenting on the extraordinary suits worn by Tommy and Prince Chillicheff, suits of a cut and pattern fantastic enough to have sauntered down Beale Street on a Sunday — when an explanation was forthcoming.
“I see you are regarding our clothes,” said the Prince. “We have just come out of Russia.”
“These were made in Poland by the court tailor,” said Tommy. “That’s a fact — Pilsudski’s own tailor.”
“You’ve been touring?” Dick asked.
They laughed, the Prince inordinately44 meanwhile clapping Tommy on the back.
“Yes, we have been touring. That’s it, touring. We have made the grand Tour of all the Russias. In state.”
Dick waited for an explanation. It came from Mr. McKibben in two words.
“They escaped.”
“Have you been prisoners in Russia?”
“It was I,” explained Prince Chillicheff, his dead yellow eyes staring at Dick. “Not a prisoner but in hiding.”
“Did you have much trouble getting out?”
“Some trouble. We left three Red Guards dead at the border. Tommy left two —” He held up two fingers like a Frenchman —“I left one.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand,” said Mr. McKibben. “Why they should have objected to your leaving.”
Hannan turned from the piano and said, winking45 at the others: “Mac thinks a Marxian is somebody who went to St. Mark’s school.”
It was an escape story in the best tradition — an aristocrat46 hiding nine years with a former servant and working in a government bakery; the eighteen-year-old daughter in Paris who knew Tommy Barban. . . . During the narrative47 Dick decided48 that this parched49 papier maché relic50 of the past was scarcely worth the lives of three young men. The question arose as to whether Tommy and Chillicheff had been frightened.
“When I was cold,” Tommy said. “I always get scared when I’m cold. During the war I was always frightened when I was cold.”
McKibben stood up.
“I must leave. To-morrow morning I’m going to Innsbruck by car with my wife and children — and the governess.”
“I’m going there to-morrow, too,” said Dick.
“Oh, are you?” exclaimed McKibben. “Why not come with us? It’s a big Packard and there’s only my wife and my children and myself — and the governess —”
“I can’t possibly —”
“Of course she’s not really a governess,” McKibben concluded, looking rather pathetically at Dick. “As a matter of fact my wife knows your sister-in-law, Baby Warren.”
But Dick was not to be drawn51 in a blind contract.
“I’ve promised to travel with two men.”
“Oh,” McKibben’s face fell. “Well, I’ll say good-by.” He unscrewed two blooded wire-hairs from a nearby table and departed; Dick pictured the jammed Packard pounding toward Innsbruck with the McKibbens and their children and their baggage and yapping dogs — and the governess.
“The paper says they know the man who killed him,” said Tommy. “But his cousins did not want it in the papers, because it happened in a speakeasy. What do you think of that?”
“It’s what’s known as family pride.”
Hannan played a loud chord on the piano to attract attention to himself.
“I don’t believe his first stuff holds up,” he said. “Even barring the Europeans there are a dozen Americans can do what North did.”
It was the first indication Dick had had that they were talking about Abe North.
“The only difference is that Abe did it first,” said Tommy.
“I don’t agree,” persisted Hannan. “He got the reputation for being a good musician because he drank so much that his friends had to explain him away somehow —”
“What’s this about Abe North? What about him? Is he in a jam?”
“Didn’t you read The Herald52 this morning?”
“No.”
“He’s dead. He was beaten to death in a speakeasy in New York. He just managed to crawl home to the Racquet Club to die —”
“Abe North?”
“Yes, sure, they —”
“Abe North?” Dick stood up. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
Hannan turned around to McKibben: “It wasn’t the Racquet Club he crawled to — it was the Harvard Club. I’m sure he didn’t belong to the Racquet.”
“The paper said so,” McKibben insisted.
“It must have been a mistake. I’m quite sure.”
“Beaten to death in a speakeasy.”
“But I happen to know most of the members of the Racquet Club,” said Hannan. “It MUST have been the Harvard Club.”
Dick got up, Tommy too. Prince Chillicheff started out of a wan1 study of nothing, perhaps of his chances of ever getting out of Russia, a study that had occupied him so long that it was doubtful if he could give it up immediately, and joined them in leaving.
“Abe North beaten to death.”
On the way to the hotel, a journey of which Dick was scarcely aware, Tommy said:
“We’re waiting for a tailor to finish some suits so we can get to Paris. I’m going into stock-broking and they wouldn’t take me if I showed up like this. Everybody in your country is making millions. Are you really leaving to-morrow? We can’t even have dinner with you. It seems the Prince had an old girl in Munich. He called her up but she’d been dead five years and we’re having dinner with the two daughters.”
The Prince nodded.
“Perhaps I could have arranged for Doctor Diver.”
“No, no,” said Dick hastily.
He slept deep and awoke to a slow mournful march passing his window. It was a long column of men in uniform, wearing the familiar helmet of 1914, thick men in frock coats and silk hats, burghers, aristocrats53, plain men. It was a society of veterans going to lay wreaths on the tombs of the dead. The column marched slowly with a sort of swagger for a lost magnificence, a past effort, a forgotten sorrow. The faces were only formally sad but Dick’s lungs burst for a moment with regret for Abe’s death, and his own youth of ten years ago.
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1
wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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cauterizing
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| v.（用腐蚀性物质或烙铁）烧灼以消毒( cauterize的现在分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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sophistries
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| n.诡辩术( sophistry的名词复数 )；（一次）诡辩 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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anthropology
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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blanch
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| v.漂白；使变白；使(植物)不见日光而变白 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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usurp
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| vt.篡夺，霸占；vi.篡位 | |
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quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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illuminated
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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diced
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| v.将…切成小方块，切成丁( dice的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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flip
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| vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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cadence
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| n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫 | |
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jaunty
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| adj．愉快的，满足的；adv.心满意足地，洋洋得意地；n.心满意足；洋洋得意 | |
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accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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inordinately
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| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
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winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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