There was something else much more urgent. I murmured the beginning of a novel. Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay. But you’ll have to be up with the lark. The wind moved the awnings, you slept, the lighthouse sobbed, the night was peaceful, almost tropical. But I would have arrived at my lighthouse soon. I felt it, it was near. It was enough to wait for it to send me a signal of light, at night, and I would have understood. I wouldn’t have let this opportunity escape (my only opportunity). I wouldn’t have spent my old age regretting missing a trip to the lighthouse. And in the meantime, I realized I was already getting old. And yet I was still young, I was a “good-looking man.” When I went down to the terrace I was aware of lingering, appreciative glances from your friends. But the age that I felt did not pertain to a registry office. It was suffocating, like a curtain over one’s face. I looked at my hands leaning on the windowsill. They were long, strong, agile. And they were old. Not you. The old age that you feared was something else. You tried to avert it with creams and lotions. You were afraid of those little spots that appear on the backs of hands. Your worst enemy was the midday sun, and when you smiled, two little menacing lines marked the corners of your mouth. You looked enviously at your guests who basked in the sun, plunged into the swimming pool, went down to the beach heedless of the saltiness. What a fool! You suffered for nothing. You were really young. This isn’t old age. You would have understood it then, you understand it now. You had a splendid body. I gazed at your legs, long, smooth legs, the only part of your body that you dared to expose to the sun. It was the Mediterranean midday. Gino wandered around the veranda serving Calvados, Bacardi, and Mazagrán. Someone stood up lazily. “We’re going down to the beach, Marline, we’ll wait for you down there …” You half-opened your eyelids, an imperceptible smile marked the corners of your mouth. Only I realized why I recognized those two little lines. You didn’t move. You remained in the deck chair immersed in a pool of shadow. Only your two legs glowed in the sun. The breeze moved the fringe on the big umbrella.
Of course I loved the villa! I liked the two mansards with their crowns of vertical wall tiles on the tiled roofs, the portico with the bell tower like that of a monastery, the white shutters renewed every summer. Early in the morning, when you were still asleep, the palm grove was full of seagulls. They came to spend the night there, leaving traces of coming and going on the sand. The afternoons were sultry, so Mediterranean, smelling of pine and myrtle. I was in the wicker chair under the colonnade, next to the little granite stairs invaded by creepers, waiting for Scottie to wake up. Around four o’clock she arrived barefoot, with pillow marks on her flushed face and a doll trailing by one leg.
“Do you like best to be called Scottie or Barbara?”
“Scottie.”
“But Scottie isn’t your real name.”
“Miss Bishop gave it to me. She says that you invented it.”
“I didn’t invent it.”
“Anyway, a friend of yours, the one who’s a writer. And when I grow up I’m going to be a little fool.”
“Did Miss Bishop tell you this, too?”
“Yes, because she says you can’t escape the destiny of all the ‘flappers.’ ”
“Of what?”
“Of the little girls, that is, but Miss Bishop calls them ‘flappers’ because a lady called Zelda said it, too.”
In the evening we talked about Fitzgerald, listening to Tony Bennett sing Tender Is the Night. To tell the truth, nobody liked the film, not even Mr. Deluxe, who really wasn’t very hard to please. But Tony Bennett had a voice “all-consuming, like the novel,” to hear him gave atmosphere, and Gino had to put on the record again who knows how many times. Inevitably I was asked for the beginning of the book. Everyone found it delicious that I knew the beginnings of Fitzgerald’s novels from memory — only the beginnings, which were a passion of mine. Mr. Deluxe, solemn as usual, invited those present, to be silent. I tried to be evasive, but it was impossible to refuse. The Tony Bennett record played softly. Gino had served the Bacardi. I stared at you. You knew that that beginning was dedicated to you, it was almost as if I had written it. You lit a cigarette and slipped it into the cigarette holder. That, too, was part of the scenery. You played the flapper, but you had nothing of the flapper about you, neither the mop of hair nor the rayon stockings, much less the soul. You belonged to another category, you could even be in a novel by Drieu, maybe, or by Pérez Galdós. You had a tragic, sense of life, perhaps it was your insuperable selfishness, like a condemnation. And then I began, amid the impatience that had already begun to manifest itself. Gino avoided serving in order not to disturb. Only the voice of Tony Bennett and the lapping of the Mediterranean could be heard. On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed facade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its English clientele went north in April….
Inevitably Bishop went to change the record. The sickly sweet tones of Cole Porter’s songs swept over us. Bishop was crazy about him. She thought that Cole Porter suited Fitzgerald. Or else she put on Nat King Cole singing Quizás, quizás, quizás. Anyway, I liked King Cole’s song, too. I felt it concerned me. It caused in me a slight melancholy. Siempre que te pregunto, que cómo dóndey quándo. … I tried to go on. All of you looked past me at the sea and the lights of the coast. In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alps that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows…. But something hindered me. My voice was uncertain, I heard it. Why did it pain me to go on? Was it perhaps the evening? Was it the lights of the coast? Was it Nat King Cole? I stared at the twilight, y asi passando el dia, y yo, desesperado … You could at least have made a gesture of agreement. But no, you looked at me as calmly as the others, as if you didn’t know that all that concerned me. I go well through the night, right, Martine? I told you with my eyes, for a few nocturnal moments, and then you go to sleep and sleep, sleep, sleep. The wind blows the awnings. There are lights down there on the coast … But the day, what is your Perri during the day? He’s the character in a little game, the figurine in a story.