In Search of Love and Beauty by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Page A

marble-topped tables for two set up in a row along the center of the restaurant. Their legs were too long to fit under the table, so they kept them crossed outside, long and smooth in silk. Both were elegantly dressed—Louise in one of her sober, well-cut suits of very expensive material with a fox-fur piece around her neck; and Regi much more flamboyantly in a long-skirted, clinging crepe de Chine dress with masses of jewelry hung like booty all over her.
    A waiter approached their table with a note. It happened regularly, and the only question was for which one of them the note was intended. This time it was for Louise; she read it and tossed it in the ashtray. “I told you, Heinz,” she spoke severely to the waiter, “not to bring me these things.”
    â€œWhat can I do,” the waiter said. He leaned over the table, not only to brush it with his napkin but also to whisper to Louise: “He says you are the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.”
    â€œRidiculous,” Regi said, stubbing out her cigarette on the note in the ashtray. “Which one is it? One of those decrepit pieces of furniture against the wall, I expect.”
    â€œThe gentleman on the right over there,” Heinz whispered.
    Only Regi turned around to look. She saw a smart, bold Viennese gallant—there were still plenty of them around in those days, sitting in their favorite cafés all day on the lookout for women with whom to have a liaison or just a rendezvous. Regi turned back contemptuously.
    â€œI don’t know why you have this fatal attraction for all the dear old gentlemen,” she told Louise. “You should see this one: why don’t you have a peep? He’s smiling all his gold teeth at you.”
    â€œI’m not interested.”
    â€œNo. I think nowadays you are only interested in Leo.”
    This upset both of them: Regi because she thought it was true, Louise because Regi was going too far.
    Assembling her dignity around her like a shawl, Louise said: “Of course I’m interested in Leo. Aren’t you? I thought we were both interested in his work.”
    â€œWell! Good heavens! Who introduced you to him in the first place? Who discovered him: you or me? I must say! Ridiculous!”
    â€œKeep your hair on please, Regi.”
    â€œSometimes you’re so irritating, I’d really like to scream. I would scream too, if we weren’t in public.”
    â€œGo on. Do. I think you ought to.”
    â€œDo you think so?” Regi asked. “Are we supposed to act out in public too?”
    They huddled closer around their little marble table and fell into a deep discussion. To the Viennese gentlemen watching them from all around the restaurant it was clear that they were talking about affairs of the heart. But actually they were discussing Leo’s theories which were changing their lives. They were both in their thirties and several years older than he was; they were married women—in Regi’s case already twice, and twice divorced: they had a lot more money than he and were at that time among those who had the privilege of supporting him. But none of this detracted from his authority over them, and they had absolutely no hesitation in putting themselves—their personalities, or inner beings, or souls (except that he disliked that word)—into his hands.
    A compromise was reached about his classes. Since Regi’s apartment was starkly modernistic with a lot of empty space, it was more suitable for the physical expression classes; while the theoretical lectures remained at Louise’s. Both represented important, indeed, inseparable aspects of his work.At that time his teaching was still loosely attached to the theater—though the theater only in so far as it was a symbol of Life; and in his theoretical classes at Louise’s he taught that the actor— mutatis mutandis, the human being—could only express those passions which