THE COMPLETE WORKS OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. Фрэнсис Скотт Фицджеральд

is most certainly a serious man and a brilliant man. Of all the men who have recently taken their degrees in neuropathology in Zurich, Dick has been regarded as the most brilliant — more brilliant than I could ever be.”

      “For shame!”

      “It’s the truth — the shame would be not to admit it. I turn to Dick when cases are highly involved. His publications are still standard in their line — go into any medical library and ask. Most students think he’s an Englishman — they don’t believe that such thoroughness could come out of America.” He groaned domestically, taking his pajamas from under the pillow, “I can’t understand why you talk this way, Kaethe — I thought you liked him.”

      “For shame!” Kaethe said. “You’re the solid one, you do the work. It’s a case of hare and tortoise — and in my opinion the hare’s race is almost done.”

      “Tch! Tch!”

      “Very well, then. It’s true.”

      With his open hand he pushed down air briskly.

      “Stop!”

      The upshot was that they had exchanged viewpoints like debaters. Kaethe admitted to herself that she had been too hard on Dick, whom she admired and of whom she stood in awe, who had been so appreciative and understanding of herself. As for Franz, once Kaethe’s idea had had time to sink in, he never after believed that Dick was a serious person. And as time went on he convinced himself that he had never thought so.

II

       Table of Contents

      Dick told Nicole an expurgated version of the catastrophe in Rome — in his version he had gone philanthropically to the rescue of a drunken friend. He could trust Baby Warren to hold her tongue, since he had painted the disastrous effect of the truth upon Nicole. All this, however, was a low hurdle compared to the lingering effect of the episode upon him.

      In reaction he took himself for an intensified beating in his work, so that Franz, trying to break with him, could find no basis on which to begin a disagreement. No friendship worth the name was ever destroyed in an hour without some painful flesh being torn — so Franz let himself believe with ever-increasing conviction that Dick travelled intellectually and emotionally at such a rate of speed that the vibrations jarred him — this was a contrast that had previously been considered a virtue in their relation. So, for the shoddiness of needs, are shoes made out of last year’s hide.

      Yet it was May before Franz found an opportunity to insert the first wedge. Dick came into his office white and tired one noon and sat down, saying:

      “Well, she’s gone.”

      “She’s dead?”

      “The heart quit.”

      Dick sat exhausted in the chair nearest the door. During three nights he had remained with the scabbed anonymous woman-artist he had come to love, formally to portion out the adrenaline, but really to throw as much wan light as he could into the darkness ahead.

      Half appreciating his feeling, Franz travelled quickly over an opinion:

      “It was neuro-syphilis. All the Wassermans we took won’t tell me differently. The spinal fluid—”

      “Never mind,” said Dick. “Oh, God, never mind! If she cared enough about her secret to take it away with her, let it go at that.”

      “You better lay off for a day.”

      “Don’t worry, I’m going to.”

      Franz had his wedge; looking up from the telegram that he was writing to the woman’s brother he inquired: “Or do you want to take a little trip?”

      “Not now.”

      “I don’t mean a vacation. There’s a case in Lausanne. I’ve been on the phone with a Chilian all morning—”

      “She was so damn brave,” said Dick. “And it took her so long.” Franz shook his head sympathetically and Dick got himself together. “Excuse me for interrupting you.”

      “This is just a change — the situation is a father’s problem with his son — the father can’t get the son up here. He wants somebody to come down there.”

      “What is it? Alcoholism? Homosexuality? When you say Lausanne—”

      “A little of everything.”

      “I’ll go down. Is there any money in it?”

      “Quite a lot, I’d say. Count on staying two or three days, and get the boy up here if he needs to be watched. In any case take your time, take your ease; combine business with pleasure.”

      After two hours’ train sleep Dick felt renewed, and he approached the interview with Señor Pardo y Cuidad Real in good spirits.

      These interviews were much of a type. Often the sheer hysteria of the family representative was as interesting psychologically as the condition of the patient. This one was no exception: Señor Pardo y Cuidad Real, a handsome iron-gray Spaniard, noble of carriage, with all the appurtenances of wealth and power, raged up and down his suite in the Hôtel de Trois Mondes and told the story of his son with no more self-control than a drunken woman.

      “I am at the end of my invention. My son is corrupt. He was corrupt at Harrow, he was corrupt at King’s College, Cambridge. He’s incorrigibly corrupt. Now that there is this drinking it is more and more obvious how he is, and there is continual scandal. I have tried everything — I worked out a plan with a doctor friend of mine, sent them together for a tour of Spain. Every evening Francisco had an injection of cantharides and then the two went together to a reputable bordello — for a week or so it seemed to work but the result was nothing. Finally last week in this very room, rather in that bathroom—” he pointed at it, “ — I made Francisco strip to the waist and lashed him with a whip—”

      Exhausted with his emotion he sat down and Dick spoke:

      “That was foolish — the trip to Spain was futile also—” He struggled against an upsurging hilarity — that any reputable medical man should have lent himself to such an amateurish experiment! “ — Señor, I must tell you that in these cases we can promise nothing. In the case of the drinking we can often accomplish something — with proper cooperation. The first thing is to see the boy and get enough of his confidence to find whether he has any insight into the matter.”

      — The boy, with whom he sat on the terrace, was about twenty, handsome and alert.

      “I’d like to know your attitude,” Dick said. “Do you feel that the situation is getting worse? And do you want to do anything about it?”

      “I suppose I do,” said Francisco, “I am very unhappy.”

      “Do you think it’s from the drinking or from the abnormality?”

      “I think the drinking is caused by the other.” He was serious for a while — suddenly an irrepressible facetiousness broke through and he laughed, saying, “It’s hopeless. At King’s I was known as the Queen of Chili. That trip to Spain — all it did was to make me nauseated by the sight of a woman.”

      Dick caught him up sharply.

      “If you’re happy in this mess, then I can’t help you and I’m wasting my time.”

      “No, let’s talk — I despise most of the others so.” There was some manliness in the boy, perverted now into an active resistance to his father. But he had that typically roguish look in his eyes that homosexuals assume in discussing the subject.

      “It’s a hole-and-corner business at best,” Dick told him. “You’ll spend your life on it, and its consequences, and you won’t have time or energy for any other decent or social act. If you want