alone.
“We shall strike a bargain, then,” she said, assuming my assent, “by which we can both achieve the goals we have in mind. You will have a woman—let us say ‘of mystery’—
on your arm.” A smile. ‘“Mister Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
and Mrs. Winfield Spencer were together again last night!’
And we both know how gossip of that kind works in this
society. Why they will positively fly to your side to know what I’m about. That is, the ladies will. While the gentlemen will sort of ambie over in my direction, mumbling into their shirts it’s a wonder they never laid eyes on me before and where have I been hiding myself?” She laughed. “And it
will work, I promise you. I’ve seen it work a hundred thousand times. And here comes the bit about the money, you
see…”
I held my breath.
75
What did she have in mind?
“As for you,” she said, smoothing out one glove and making a perfect hand of it, “all those ladies have sons and
daughters. Or, most of them do. And, once they hear about your expertise in languages, why, take your pick and name your price!”
It made sense.
“As for me—” and here she smoothed the second glove,
face down on top of the other “—it may come as some
surprise, Mister Mauberley, but one of my talents happens to be a very great expertise with a deck of cards. In fact it is not too boastful to claim my poker skills are a match for any man’s. And I stress the word man. Because it is the men I want to play. It is the men who have the money. It is the money that 1 need. It is…”
She waited.
Then she smiled the saddest smile I’ve ever seen and said: “I only want one thing. I only want my life.”
She is renowned—and justly so—for her smile.
In those days, it was battered out of tin. Now gold. But battered, nonetheless.
When this is read, remember that: the hammer blows. The baseball bats.
This now begins to fade.
I do not know when 1 became her lover in my mind; as
I had been Dmitri’s lover in my mind; and countless others’
since. In my mind. 1 do know this: it was her audacity that won me. Her ruthless stillness, seated in her place in the lobby of the old Imperial Hotel, with her feet in the dragon’s mouth, waiting to be seen; her awareness, even then, that she had a place in time. And ves—she was debonair: the first to laugh; the last to weep: the best of company. And brave. It was not and it has not boon a fearful thing to watch her climb.
“I ivani my life,” she had said.
And, since my father died, I had been waiting for someone—anyone—to say those words out loud.
At this point, Quinn got down from the chair on which he had been standing and sat with the candle in his hands and closed his eyes.
His neck was sore. He was not even sure how long he had been standing on the chair—almost falling over backwards, shifting the candle from hand to hand, squinting at the writing, losing it in and out of focus.
At last he got up and set the candle in the centre of the desk and lit yet another cigarette. The whole room smelled of smoke and candle stubs—much the same, he imagined,
as it must have smelled to Mauberley at work on his “frescoes”.
For a moment—and perhaps it was his own shadow—he
caught a vision of the writer writing: pinned in his blanket, with his hair all matted with plaster dust, his fingers jetting out of finger less gloves and the silver pencil never pausing, gouging out the words. But Quinn, disoriented, looked up and saw not words but pictures: animals drawn on the ceiling above his head. Deer—bison—stars—the moon and
Mauberley’s handprint. Maybe he had needed to create another image of the world: innocent and shining, like the one
the Duchess of Windsor had intended when she said; “we
are led into the light and shown such marvels as one cannot (efl…And then…”
Quinn turned. He looked at the words that Mauberley had written on the walls.
And he thought; “we have an
“We shall strike a bargain, then,” she said, assuming my assent, “by which we can both achieve the goals we have in mind. You will have a woman—let us say ‘of mystery’—
on your arm.” A smile. ‘“Mister Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
and Mrs. Winfield Spencer were together again last night!’
And we both know how gossip of that kind works in this
society. Why they will positively fly to your side to know what I’m about. That is, the ladies will. While the gentlemen will sort of ambie over in my direction, mumbling into their shirts it’s a wonder they never laid eyes on me before and where have I been hiding myself?” She laughed. “And it
will work, I promise you. I’ve seen it work a hundred thousand times. And here comes the bit about the money, you
see…”
I held my breath.
75
What did she have in mind?
“As for you,” she said, smoothing out one glove and making a perfect hand of it, “all those ladies have sons and
daughters. Or, most of them do. And, once they hear about your expertise in languages, why, take your pick and name your price!”
It made sense.
“As for me—” and here she smoothed the second glove,
face down on top of the other “—it may come as some
surprise, Mister Mauberley, but one of my talents happens to be a very great expertise with a deck of cards. In fact it is not too boastful to claim my poker skills are a match for any man’s. And I stress the word man. Because it is the men I want to play. It is the men who have the money. It is the money that 1 need. It is…”
She waited.
Then she smiled the saddest smile I’ve ever seen and said: “I only want one thing. I only want my life.”
She is renowned—and justly so—for her smile.
In those days, it was battered out of tin. Now gold. But battered, nonetheless.
When this is read, remember that: the hammer blows. The baseball bats.
This now begins to fade.
I do not know when 1 became her lover in my mind; as
I had been Dmitri’s lover in my mind; and countless others’
since. In my mind. 1 do know this: it was her audacity that won me. Her ruthless stillness, seated in her place in the lobby of the old Imperial Hotel, with her feet in the dragon’s mouth, waiting to be seen; her awareness, even then, that she had a place in time. And ves—she was debonair: the first to laugh; the last to weep: the best of company. And brave. It was not and it has not boon a fearful thing to watch her climb.
“I ivani my life,” she had said.
And, since my father died, I had been waiting for someone—anyone—to say those words out loud.
At this point, Quinn got down from the chair on which he had been standing and sat with the candle in his hands and closed his eyes.
His neck was sore. He was not even sure how long he had been standing on the chair—almost falling over backwards, shifting the candle from hand to hand, squinting at the writing, losing it in and out of focus.
At last he got up and set the candle in the centre of the desk and lit yet another cigarette. The whole room smelled of smoke and candle stubs—much the same, he imagined,
as it must have smelled to Mauberley at work on his “frescoes”.
For a moment—and perhaps it was his own shadow—he
caught a vision of the writer writing: pinned in his blanket, with his hair all matted with plaster dust, his fingers jetting out of finger less gloves and the silver pencil never pausing, gouging out the words. But Quinn, disoriented, looked up and saw not words but pictures: animals drawn on the ceiling above his head. Deer—bison—stars—the moon and
Mauberley’s handprint. Maybe he had needed to create another image of the world: innocent and shining, like the one
the Duchess of Windsor had intended when she said; “we
are led into the light and shown such marvels as one cannot (efl…And then…”
Quinn turned. He looked at the words that Mauberley had written on the walls.
And he thought; “we have an
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