to
jack kahane
{169}
it was in may, 1912, that katya kontorompa met cosmopolitan guy fallon, and decided to make him fall in love with her. she was staying at the olympos hotel, in salonika, with her mother, and fallon had a suite of rooms on the ground floor. he was tall, dark, and vivid; moreover, he was young; best of all, he was fabulously wealthy.
“a week next thursday,” said katya one afternoon to her mother, as they sat on the shaded balcony on the first floor, “guy fallon will propose to me. it will take place in the evening in one of those boats.”
she nodded towards a flotilla of little rowing-boats that stirred lazily to the rhythm of the lazy waves.
“yes?” inquired her mother, who sat in a low chair looking benevolently at the world that god had made specially for her.
“and though i shall be a little timid at first,” continued katya, “i shall say yes as soon as he has kissed me passionately on the mouth. but not until. i think he would kiss rather well, don’t you?”
“i think he would be thorough, dear.... but we musn’t talk like this. i never used even to think like it till you came home from brussels.”
“would you like guy for a son-in-law, mamma?”
as a matter of fact, mrs. kontorompa was fascinated by fallon almost as much as her daughter was, and it was with a wholly sensuous feeling that she closed her lids and said:{170}
“yes, dear, i should—very much.”
“but the kind of kisses he would bestow upon you, mamma, would be very different from those i should get,” said katya, mischievously.
but though fallon saw a good deal of the two ladies during the next few days, there was something in his manner that made mrs. kontorompa suspect he had no intention of marrying her daughter. he was in love with her—yes; but it was not quite the kind of love that leads to marriage. rather was it the kind of hot, uneasy passion that persecutes a man until he has gained his desire, when it shrinks and dies like an orchid in a night of frost. but katya, of course, was extraordinarily clever: ignobly so. she was directing the affair with elaborate carefulness, confident that in the end she would trap this bright tiger of a man in her net of conspiracies.
though living in the same hotel, fallon wrote to her twice every day. sitting up in bed in his yellow pyjamas each night, he wrote just before he slept, and the note was delivered by his valet to katya’s maid at eight o’clock every morning. and just before dinner in the evening he also wrote, and this letter he himself handed to katya as they said good night. fallon knew how to write. he had a habit of intoxicating himself with words, and though each letter said: “i love you! i want you!” he rescued himself from monotony and her from boredom, by saying the same thing in a hundred different ways. but he was never tender, and mrs. kontorompa, who eagerly read the letters katya passed on to her, was driven on one occasion to remark:{171}
“it is not marriage-love. your father has never loved me like that!”
“poor mamma!” murmured katya; “poor mamma! but don’t you wish he had?”
fallon was with the kontorompas almost every hour of every day. in the afternoons, when mrs. kontorompa slept, the two lovers played pianoforte duets in the big, deserted lounge. fallon was a masterful pianist, and he played in a manner that suggested intense hunger of the soul. in these hours he had no courtesy, and when she bungled a passage he would scowl at her and call her a little fool. and at this she would laugh and play carelessly in order to taste his anger once again....
“to-day is thursday,” announced katya, one morning, as she and her mother breakfasted alone in their room.
“so it is,” agreed her mother, without conviction.
“but i mean it’s the thursday. this evening guy will ask me to marry him. after dinner he and i will walk to the white tower. there we shall get a boat. guy will row. there will be a moon.”
she spoke as though she had arranged for the moon to be there.
“do take care of yourself, dear. mr. fallon is so dark and so ... so impulsive. you know what i mean.”
“yes, i know what you mean, mamm{172}a; but those little rowing-boats are quite safe in more senses than one.”
and because she was so anxious for the evening to come, katya found the bright hours of the day tepid and slow. she was very quiet and subdued in the afternoon, when fallon found her in the empty lounge.
“come and play!” he commanded.
“i feel languid and lazy, like a cat in the sun,” she said; “besides, i’m reading.”
“very well—we’ll play the petite suite of debussy’s and some other tame stuff. let’s sentimentalize together.”
“oh, but you’d find out too much about me. we should get too close to each other in that soft, melting music.”
“is it possible for us to get too close to each other?” he asked, with a laugh that seemed to be half a sneer.
she rose, and together they walked to the piano.
only those who have played in concerted music know how easy it is for two souls to mingle in sound. they enjoy an intimacy which no passionate avowals, no tender pleadings, and, indeed, no physical contact can provide. debussy is never entirely innocent: even his gold-fishes swim wantonly in their pool: and the very tender miniatures of the petite suite are decadent with faint exhalations of patchouli.
fallon detested the casual promiscuities of secret lovers—the pressure of hands, the stolen kisses, the entire vocabulary of illicitness. he had the fastidiousness of the gourmet, and as yet his body had tasted nothing of katya’s d{173}elights, save the sharp thrill that eyes can communicate, and the peculiar, ghostly, but sensuous intimacy supplied by music.
katya’s moon was in its appointed place as the two lovers silently descended the quay at the white tower and embarked in their little boat. guy rowed out into the bay. there was no breathing in the air, no ripple on the sea. the stars made magic in the sky, and conspired with the moon to create a feeling of far-off voluptuousness.
fallon rowed lazily until they were a mile or so from the town, which was visible as a vast congeries of lights—chains of lights, terraces of lights, huge constellations poised in the air, lonely points of flame burning in solitary places.
“like a huge window full of jewels,” said katya.
the tens of thousands of lights were reflected in the sea as clearly as a face is reflected in a mirror.
“which is the more real?” asked fallon; “the city’s illumination or the sea’s version of it?”
“the water is quite warm,” said katya, laying a white hand on the surface of the indigo sea.
“yes,” said fallon. “you could, if you wished, more easily plunge your hand into my heart than into that water.”{174}
“i know,” she said; “perhaps some day i will.”
“perhaps some day it will be too late. i cannot go on loving you like this—desperately—for ever. love can be broken by its own strength.”
“you must not threaten me,” she said. “your attraction for me is your strength: strong people do not threaten. they do not even warn.”
“then you do love me?”
“of course. that is, if you call it love.”
“if i lean forward i can kiss your ankle.”
she laughed.
“humour must be preserved even if propriety isn’t,” she said; “nevertheless, you may kiss it.”
she felt the long warmth of his lips through her puce-coloured silk stockings. a hot wind suddenly came from the south, stirring the sea to life.
“and now,” she said, “you’d better row back.”
“we were fools to come here,” he said.
“yes?... why? tell me.”
but he sat moodily for a minute without speaking. then he lit a cigarette, and by the light of his match katya saw the passion in his eyes.
“you’re a bit of a tiger,” she said.
“and you’re much of an iceberg,” he retorted.
“passionless, cold, serene,” she quoted. “i wonder if i am. i’ve never yet had the chance of finding out.”{175}
but he made no reply. his silence, his lack of directness, the lazy contemptuous manner in which he smoked his cigarette, whipped her to anger.
“let’s go back,” she said, abruptly.
“no,” he replied, with grimness. “i’ve got you here.”
“very well,” she said; “then give me a cigarette.”
he threw her a case and a box of matches.
then, suddenly, words came from him in a torrent.
“you confess you love me. well, if you do—passion’s what i want. affection’s nothing to me. you’ve ‘never yet had a chance of finding out.’ do you expect me to believe that? you were made to tempt men ... and to satisfy them. listen, katya: i love every bit of you. you’re not cold. you could kiss, i know. let me row you back.”
his cigarette gave a little hiss as it hit the water. he threw his arms forward, desperately.
“yes, let me row you back,” he repeated.
“i love you,” she answered, “but i can never be your mistress. i’m not angry with you....”
“do you think i should care if you were?” he interrupted, violently. “do you think i care a damn for your anger?—or your love? you would like to be cruel to me: i know: i know your sort. but i can wash you from my mind as easily as the sea has put out my cigarette.”
“oh, no!” she said; “you can’t do that. you know yo{176}u can’t. something of me will be with you always.”
he took the oars and began to row. the little indigo waves passed by them; the feathered oars slid along their crests. at each pull the boat leapt; something of his strength was imparted to her body; she quivered in response.
at the quay of the white tower he was rough and insolent.
“get out, quick!” he commanded; “let’s finish this ridiculous business as speedily as possible.”
she turned upon him with an amused smile.
“you have the most dreadful manners of any man i have ever met,” she said, with a little laugh. “when you are in a temper, you are about twelve years old.”
he called a gharry, waited until she had stepped into it, and then strode away.
mrs. kontorompa was sitting up in bed, reading, when katya opened her mother’s bedroom door. she looked at her daughter with a contented smile.
“nothing happened,” announced katya. “he does not want to marry me.”
“my poor child! never mind: there were weeks and weeks when i used to think the same about your father. men never know their own minds.”
“but fallon shall know his,” said katya; “i’m as clever as any man i’ve come across yet.”{177}
“do be careful, dear. you were careful to-night?”
“very. he only kissed my ankle.”
“your ankle!” exclaimed her mother, in amazement; “whatever for? why should he want to kiss your ankle?”
“well,” said katya, laughing, “i’ve got rather a nice ankle, you know.”
mrs. kontorompa, who had no ankles at all, but merely calves terminating in feet, sighed anxiously.
“your father never kissed my ankles,” she said, disapprovingly.
“ask him to!” urged katya, mischievously; “it’s a delightful feeling.”
a week later fallon, dressed in white duck, knocked early one morning at mrs. kontorompa’s drawing-room door. katya and katya’s mother were to go with him to langaza to picnic. but at the very last moment mrs. kontorompa, as had been arranged between her daughter and herself, felt indisposed.
“you will come by yourself,” said fallon.
“of course,” answered katya.
the chauffeur was discreet and unobservant: he was paid a very large salary for not seeing things.
their car was fitted with a lace awning, but the air was so hot and dry, that before they were well over the deserted lembet plain they were inordinately thirsty. so fallon stopped the car and opened a half-bottle of champagne.{178}
“i didn’t bring champagne just because it’s expensive,” he explained, “but because i know you like it. look!—the ice is half melted already.”
“it will be cooler by the lake,” said katya; “there may even be a little breeze. i never drink champagne on a hot day,” she added, “without longing to have a bath in it. it would tingle so deliciously, like electricity.”
“sensualist! i’ve often noticed you love the sensations you’ve never experienced.”
“the worst of it is, there are so few of them left.”
but fallon was not interested, and he threw the empty bottle on the roadside with a gesture of boredom.
“drive on!” he ordered the chauffeur.
when a mile from langaza lake, the car was drawn up by the side of the deserted road, and their chauffeur spread out their lunch under the shade of a little grove of poplars.
in silence they ate and drank. the sun-baked plain sent waves of visible heat into the sky. no birds sang. the bronze sound of a sheep-bell came from afar.
“life passes,” said katya, at length, “and we grow older.”
“true,” answered he, mockingly. “it is only the grass that never withers. it was here ten thousand years ago, and it is here to-day.”
“but you and i!—how quickly age will come to us!” she said.
“how foolish, then, to waste our youth!” he urged. “sometime{179}s i feel angry at those days which slip by empty of ecstasy. waste! it’s all waste! waste of days, of months, of years! just because we refuse to take what life offers us. we do not live for ever, and the things that taste sweet to-day will in a few years be but bitterness and ashes.”
he allowed his wine-glass to slip from his lax fingers on to the grass.
“let us walk,” he said; “i’m restless.”
so they rose and walked slowly towards the lake.
“what is that parcel you are carrying?” he asked, when they were near the lake’s border.
“oh, i thought perhaps i’d do some sketching when we got to the lake. we can sit down, and you may smoke while i work. no, thanks: i can easily carry it myself.”
they walked on in silence. then:
“you were talking about waste,” she said.
“was i? yes. but it’s a dreary subject. i was lecturing you, really, you know; for you’re wasting my life as well as your own. you’re destroying these days. it’s just a week since you told me you loved me.”
“yes, but i said ‘if you call it love.’ to you love is one thing; to me, another.”
“why? what do you imagine is my idea of love?”
“just appetite—the satisfaction of an appetite.”
“and your idea?”
“service.”{180}
he laughed on a high note of contempt.
“you deceive yourself,” he said. “do you think i don’t know you? do you think i live with my eyes shut? if you were to confess that your idea of love is a means of obtaining security against life, i’d believe you. in other words—you like me in my brutal moods, don’t you?—if i asked you to marry me, you would serve me for what i would give you in return. is that what you mean by service?”
“you believe, then, i would accept your invitation if you asked me to marry you?”
“most assuredly. let’s finish this subtle, month-old fight of ours, and speak in plain words.”
“but we understand each other so well without plain words!” she protested.
“do we? i wonder. tell me, then: why don’t i ask you to marry me?”
“because you don’t love me. your body merely aches for mine. you suffer, i know.”
“yes, i do,” he acknowledged; “but i can endure pain. most men can’t: that is why they are willing to incur the discomfort and long penance of marriage—anything rather than continue to suffer.”
“then why don’t you go away? why don’t you leave me altogether?”
but he did not answer.
“is it,” she asked, “because you still hope to win me without marriage?”
he turned upon her savagely.
“temptress and taunter!” he {181}exclaimed. “i know your sort. you love to feel your hideous power. you suck delight from my misery.”
he drew nearer to her and seized one of her wrists.
“i love you,” he whispered; “isn’t that enough?”
they were in a little pathway among the rushes by the lake’s side. suddenly, she wrested herself away from him and, raising her right arm, threw the parcel she carried into the lake. it floated on the surface, and the gentle south wind moved it slowly across the water in the direction of langaza village, a couple of miles away.
she looked at him with a mocking smile.
“let us go back,” she said, “for this is merely the waste of another day.”
“why have you thrown your sketching things away?” he asked, stupidly.
“i haven’t. the things i have thrown away were once yours. then they became mine. they will belong to the person who finds them.”
the words came hysterically, and she trembled a little.
“what are they?” he asked.
“your letters to me. i have finished with you. this is the end.”
he began to laugh, but his laughter quickly died in his throat.
“you fool!” he exclaimed; “you spiteful little devil! my name is on each of those letters.”
he quivered with {182}anger, and raised his fist as though to strike.
“i know,” she said. “that is one of the reasons why i threw them away. it is time your folly was known to others besides me.”
she looked upon him with malice, delighting in his anger. then she laughed softly, taunting him.
“can’t you swim?” she asked. “see, it isn’t very far off.”
but he strode away in the direction of the motor-car. she called after him, gently, lovingly.
“guy! guy!”
he stopped and turned, his face and attitude contemptuous. running up to him, she threw her arms about his neck and, half-sobbing, half-laughing, stammered:
“guy! dear guy! i was only fooling you. they were not your letters—not one of them. your dearest letters i carry in my breast, next to my heart.”
he pressed his face hard against her neck.
“you little devil, you! why do we torture each other like this?”
she clung to him desperately.
“marry me! marry me!” she implored.
“yes, i will: i’m damned if i won’t. but, i warn you—look out! we shall both have a hell of a time.”
“but there’ll be a month or two of heaven first,” she said, and, opening his shirt at the neck, she kissed him low down on his breast.
