Nightwork

Whenever the four of us went anyplace together, the two women invariably drew intense looks of admiration from the other men in the room, with Eunice getting just about the same time and an equal coefficient of lust as her more spectacular sister. Under other circumstances I would undoubtedly have been attracted to the girl, but confronted with Fabian's semi-innocent voyeurism and raked by Lily's cold, Florentine eye, I could not bring myself to voice any proposals, or even indicate that they might be welcome if they came from Lily's sister. I had been brought up to believe that sex was a private aberration, not a public enterprise, and it was too late to change now. Chastely, ever since her arrival, Eunice and I had said good night in the elevator, without as much as a kiss on the cheek. Our rooms were on different floors.

It was with something like relief that I listened to the complaints of the two ladies about staying on in Zurich. They had exhausted the shopping, they said, the climate oppressed them, and they didn't know what to do with themselves in the long hours Fabian and I sat talking in offices or in the lobby of the hotel with the various businessmen, bankers, and brokers Fabian collected from the financial center of the city, all of whom spoke, or rather whispered, English in a variety of accents, but whom I didn't understand any better than either Eunice or Lily would have done if they had been in my place. Unfortunately, I had to stay, both at Fabian's request and because of my grim resolve to be present at all transactions. But the two sisters had entrained for Gstaad, where the sun, according to the weather reports, was shining, the snow good, and the company welcoming. We would follow, Fabian promised, as soon as our business was finished in Zurich, which would not be long, he said, and then on to Italy. Fabian gave them the equivalent in Swiss francs of two thousand dollars from our joint account. Walking-around money, he called it, in a phrase I had come to dread. For a man who had led a precarious existence for most of his life, he had lordly habits.

Once the sisters were out of the way, Fabian managed to find time for some of the other attractions of the city. We spent long hours in the art museum, with especial attention to a Cranach nude that Fabian visited, he said, every time he passed through Zurich. He never tried to explain his particular tastes to me, but seemed content enough if I merely accompanied him on his rounds of the art galleries of the city. We went to a concert where we heard a program of Brahms, but all he said about it was, 'In Mitteleuropa, you must listen to Brahms.'

He even took me to the cemetery where James Joyce, who died in Zurich, was buried, the grave marked by a statue of the writer, and there wrung from me the admission that I had never read Ulysses. When we got back to town, he took me directly to a bookstore and bought me a copy. For the first time I had an inkling of the fact that the prisons of the world might be filled with men who had read Plato and appreciated music, literature, modern painting, fine wines, and thoroughbred horses.

The thought had crossed my mind that he was attempting, for some private reason of his own, to corrupt me. But if so, he was doing it in a most peculiar way. Ever since we had left Paris, he had treated me in a semi-affectionate, semi-condescending manner, like a sophisticated uncle entrusted for a short while with the worldly education of an untutored nephew from a backward part of the world. Things had moved so fast, and the future he outlined seemed so bright, that I had had neither the time nor the inclination to complain. The truth was that, during those first days, despite my moments of panic, I felt myself lucky to have lost my suitcase to him. I hoped that before long I could manage to behave very much as he did. In other eras the virtues for which heroes were celebrated were such commonplaces as courage, generosity, guile, fidelity, and faith, and hardly ever included, as far as I could remember, aplomb. But in our

uneasy time, when most of us hardly know where we stand, cannot say with confidence whether we are rising or falling, advancing or retreating, whether we are loved or hated, despised or adored, aplomb attains, at least for people like myself, a primary importance.

Whatever Miles Fabian may have lacked, he had aplomb.

* * *

'Something has come up,' Fabian said. 'In Lugano.' We were in the living room of his suite, littered, as usual, with American, English, French, German, and Italian newspapers, all open to the financial pages. He was still in his bathrobe, having his morning coffee. I had had my morning Alka-Seltzer in my room on the floor below.

'I thought we were going to Gstaad,' I said.

'Gstaad can wait.' He stirred his coffee vigorously. For the first time I noticed that his hands looked older than his face. 'Of course, if you want, you can go to Gstaad without me.'

'Is it business in Lugano?'