Tender is the Night / Ночь нежна. Фрэнсис Скотт Фицджеральд

after two unsuccessful attempts had managed to climb on the raft. “I was just saying that Abe North may be a good swimmer but he’s a rotten musician.”

      “Yes,” agreed McKisco, grudgingly. Obviously he had created his wife’s world of opinions.

      The woman of the pearls had joined her two children in the water, and now Abe North came up under one of them like a volcanic island, raising him on his shoulders. The child yelled with fear and delight and the woman watched with a lovely peace, without a smile.

      “Is that his wife?” Rosemary asked.

      “No, that’s Mrs. Diver. They’re not at the hotel.” After a moment she turned to Rosemary.

      “Have you been abroad before?”

      “Yes – I went to school in Paris.”

      “Oh! Well, then you probably know that if you want to enjoy yourself here the thing is to get to know some real French families. They just stick around with each other in little groups. Of course, we had letters of introduction and met all the best French artists and writers in Paris. That made it very nice.”

      “I should think so.”

      “My husband is finishing his first novel, you see.”

      Rosemary said: “Oh, he is?” She was not thinking anything special, except wondering whether her mother had got to sleep in this heat.

      She swam back to the shore, where she threw her peignoir over her already sore shoulders and lay down again in the sun. The man with the jockey cap was now going from umbrella to umbrella carrying a bottle and little glasses in his hands; presently he and his friends grew livelier and closer together under one big umbrella – she understood that some one was leaving and that this was a last drink on the beach. Excitement was generating under that umbrella – and it seemed to Rosemary that it all came from the man in the jockey cap.

      Campion walked near her, stood a few feet away and Rosemary closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep; then she fell really asleep.

      She awoke to find the beach deserted save for the man in the jockey cap, who was folding a last umbrella. As Rosemary lay blinking, he walked nearer and said:

      “I was going to wake you before I left. It’s not good to get too burned right away.”

      “Thank you.” Rosemary looked down at her crimson legs.

      “Heavens!”

      She laughed cheerfully, inviting him to talk, but Dick Diver was already carrying a tent and a beach umbrella up to a waiting car, so she went into the water. He came back, collected his things and glanced up and down the beach to see if he had left anything.

      “Do you know what time it is?” Rosemary asked.

      “It’s about half-past one.”

      He looked at her and for a moment she lived in the bright blue worlds of his eyes. Then he shouldered his last piece of junk and went up to his car, and Rosemary came out of the water, shook out her peignoir and walked up to the hotel.

      Chapter 3

      It was almost two when they went into the dining-room. Two waiters, piling plates and talking loud Italian, fell silent when they came in and brought them the table d’hôte luncheon[13].

      “I fell in love on the beach,” said Rosemary.

      “Who with?”

      “First with a whole lot of people who looked nice. Then with one man.”

      “Did you talk to him?”

      “Just a little. Very handsome. With reddish hair.” She was eating, ravenously. “He’s married though – it’s usually the way.”

      Her mother was her best friend. She was twice satisfactorily married and twice widowed, her cheerful stoicism had each time deepened. One of her husbands had been a cavalry ofifcer and one an army doctor, and they both left something to her that she tried to present intact to Rosemary.

      “Then you like it here?” she asked.

      “It might be fun if we knew those people. There were some other people, but they weren’t nice. They recognized me – no matter where we go everybody’s seen ‘Daddy’s Girl.’”

      Mrs. Speers waited for Rosemary’s egotism to pass; then she said in a matter-of-fact way: “That reminds me[14], when are you going to see Earl Brady?”

      “I thought we might go this afternoon – if you’re rested.”

      “You go – I’m not going.”

      “We’ll wait till to-morrow then.”

      “I want you to go alone. It’s only a short way – it isn’t as if you didn’t speak French[15].”

      “Mother – aren’t there some things I don’t have to do?”

      “Oh, well then go later – but some day before we leave.”

      “All right, Mother.”

      After lunch they were both taken by the sudden weakness that comes over American travellers in quiet foreign places: they felt that life was not continuing here.

      “Let’s only stay three days, Mother,” Rosemary said when they were back in their rooms.

      “How about the man you fell in love with on the beach?”

      “I don’t love anybody but you, Mother, darling.”

      Rosemary stopped in the lobby and spoke to the concierge about trains. She took the bus and rode to the station. The first-class compartment was stifling. Unlike American trains, this train was part of the country through which it passed. Its breath stirred the dust from the palm leaves. Rosemary was sure she could lean from the window and pull flowers with her hand.

      A dozen cabbies slept in their taxis outside the Cannes station. As she came out of a drug store with a bottle of cocoanut oil, a woman, whom she recognized as Mrs. Diver, crossed her path with arms full of sofa cushions, and went to a car parked down the street. A long black dog barked at her, a dozing chauffeur woke with a start. She sat in the car, her lovely face set, her eyes watchful, looking straight ahead toward nothing. Her dress was bright red and her brown legs were bare. She had thick, dark, gold hair.

      With half an hour to wait for her train Rosemary sat down in the Café des Alliés[16]. She had bought Le Temps[17] and The Saturday Evening Post[18] for her mother, and as she drank her citronade she opened the latter at the memoirs of a Russian princess and now began to feel that French life was empty and stale. She was glad to go back to Gausse’s Hotel.

      Her shoulders were too burned to swim with the next day, so she and her mother hired a car and drove along the Riviera, the delta of many rivers. The chauffeur, a Russian Czar of the period of Ivan the Terrible, was a self-appointed guide, and the beautiful names – Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo[19] – began whispering of old kings come here to dine or die, of Russian princes spending the weeks here in the lost caviar days. Most of all, there was the scent of the Russians along the coast – their closed book shops and grocery stores. Ten years ago, when the season ended in April, the doors of the Orthodox Church were locked, and the sweet champagnes they favored were put away until their return. “We’ll be back next season,” they said, but they were never coming back any more.

      It

13

комплексный обед

14

кстати

15

к тому же ты говоришь по-французски

16

Кафе союзников

17

(букв.) «Время» – ежедневная швейцарская газета на французском языке.

18

(букв.) «Субботняя вечерняя почта» – американский журнал.

19

Ницца, Монте-Карло – города Лазурного берега.