The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentionsâand simultaneously a glimmer in the old manâs eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the roomâhe detested Shuttleworthâbut the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.
âNow that youâre here you ought to do something,â said his grandfather softly, âaccomplish something.â
Anthony waited for him to speak of âleaving something done when you pass on.â Then he made a suggestion:
âI thoughtâit seemed to me that perhaps Iâm best qualified to writeââ
Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.
ââhistory,â finished Anthony.
âHistory? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?â
âWhyâno, sir. A history of the Middle Ages.â Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said âMiddle Ages.â
âMiddle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?â
âWell, you see Iâve lived so much abroadââ
âWhy you should write about the Middle Ages, I donât know. Dark Ages, we used to call âem. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that theyâre over now.â He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the âcorruption of the monasteries.â Then:
âDo you think youâll be able to do any work in New Yorkâor do you really intend to work at all?â This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.
âWhy, yes, I do, sir.â
âWhenâll you be done?â
âWell, thereâll be an outline, you seeâand a lot of preliminary reading.â
âI should think youâd have done enough of that already.â
The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.
Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothingâand contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.
AFTERNOONIt was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of âErewhon.â It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.
âTo ⊠you ⊠beautif-ul lady,â
he was singing as he turned on the tap.
âI raise ⊠my ⊠eyes; To ⊠you ⊠beautif-ul la-a-dy My ⊠heart ⊠criesââ
He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.
Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatreâCaramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.
Anthony was glad he wasnât going to work on his book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothedâthe whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.
Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.
He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouthâwhich fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focussed upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.
It was a girl in a red negligïżœ, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.
He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautifulâthen of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.
He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.
âTo ⊠you ⊠beautif-ul lady,â
he sang lightly,
âI raise ⊠my ⊠eyesââ
Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.
THREE MENAt seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possibleâand, if so, Herculeanâmother-cat. During Anthonyâs time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most originalâsmart, quiet and among the saved.
This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.
They are glad to see each other nowâtheir eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each otherâs presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-oâ-the-wisp, restlessâhe is at rest now.
They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.
ANTHONY: Seven oâclock. Whereâs the Caramel? (Impatiently.) I wish heâd finish that interminable novel. Iâve spent more time hungryâ-
MAURY: Heâs got a new name for it. âThe Demon Lover âânot bad, eh?
ANTHONY: (interested) âThe Demon Loverâ? Oh âwoman wailingââNoânot a bit bad! Not bad at allâdâyou think?
MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?
ANTHONY: Seven.
MAURY:_(His eyes narrowingânot unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval)_ Drove me crazy the other day.
ANTHONY: How?
MAURY: That habit of taking notes.
ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems Iâd said something night before that he considered material but heâd forgotten itâso he had at me. Heâd say âCanât you try to concentrate?â And Iâd say âYou bore me to tears. How do I remember?â
(MAURY laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features.)
MAURY: Dick doesnât necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.
ANTHONY: That rather impressive talentâ-
MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!
ANTHONY: And energyâambitious, well-directed energy. Heâs so entertainingâheâs so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often thereâs something breathless in being with him.
MAURY: Oh, yes. (Silence, and then:)
ANTHONY: (With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, itâll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.
MAURY: (With laughter) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And Iâll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his sideâcreative mind over merely critical mind and all that.
ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But heâs wrong. Heâs inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasnât that heâs absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic heâd beâheâd be credulous as a college religious leader. Heâs an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks heâs not, because heâs rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.
MAURY:_(Still considering his own last observation)_ I remember.
ANTHONY: Itâs true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take artâ
MAURY: Letâs order. Heâll beâ
ANTHONY: Sure. Letâs order. I told himâ
MAURY: Here he comes. Lookâheâs going to bump that waiter. (He lifts his finger as a signalâlifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw.) Here yâare, Caramel.
A NEW VOICE: (Fiercely) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adamâs grandson? Dïżœbutantes still after you, eh?
In person RICHARD CARAMEL is short and fairâhe is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyesâone of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy poolâand a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other placesâhis paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scrapsâon these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand.
When he reaches the table he
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