least he hadn’t. Women, if the worst comes to the worst, have always the hope of marrying well. But he had had no hope at all.
Now he was miserable in comfort, which meant that, except at three in the morning, when his sleeping pill didn’t work, he was never miserable. He enjoyed his life very much. He never tired of watching it. “You will admit that, if it was not life, it was magnificent,” said Fitzgerald once, speaking up from squalor, of the carpeted existence of the rich. Being rich himself now, Charlie agreed. Nor had he ever been tempted to slash his wrists over a chorus boy. Suicide he left to Seneca and the proper time. The world is full of chorus boys, the woods are full of wives, but we have only one pair of wrists. He always treated razor blades with caution. There is a temptation in them, even though we do not feel it. They have the seductiveness of all dangerous things. If we are to survive we must lash ourselves to the mast.
Of course to write books is only to play with dolls, but it is by playing with dolls that a child learns how people behave. So Charlie found the work interesting enough.
To be second-rate is not the same as to be a fraud. If you are a fraud you worry. If you are second-rate, you are allowed to putter and to have your vanities. He liked to spend all morning searching for the mot juste to fit in a passage that didn’t really deserve one. A good brood over the alchimie du verbe was thoroughly enjoyable. Because of course itdidn’t matter. He could afford to fribble away his time that way, and since he could not succeed, he did not have to worry lest he fail.
However, though he liked the contiguity of the world, he never could abide someone in the same rooms while he was working, so he got up and told Paul to take Unne downstairs for a drink and leave him in peace.
To his surprise, Paul seemed to like the idea. But instead of getting peace, Charlie just found himself thinking about Lotte. He called her up.
“I’m still in bed.”
“I’ve seen you in bed before.”
The number of people who were allowed in to that presence before it had its face on must be limited, but he was one of the permissible. She hesitated, and then told him yes, to come along.
Going down the hotel corridor it occurred to him that he had read in Musil (though Charlie never read authors when they first came out, he did believe in being on to the latest thing, so he always read them when they were revived) the idea that people live in hotels because it gives them the illusion of living in a country house, and they can’t afford a country house any more.
Suppose, then—it was another one of Charlie’s imaginary novels (in reality Charlie wrote only about the more expensive sort of refugee, or about his own past, though not often, since he couldn’t remember his own past very well, not having had one)—that you took one of those charming tales by Turgenev, in which the world is a country house, Adam has a commission in the army, Eve has just come back from her finishing school, and Razumov, whatever his ideals, wouldn’t hurt a fly really, and moved the setting to a hotel, but to this kind of hotel, a hotel for the resident or at least the migratory rich.
No, it wouldn’t do. Turgenev’s people have all graduated to sports cars, and scorn the brake. That ruins their charm. It has also changed their nature.
He went into Lotte’s sitting room without knocking, and on into the bedroom. She was in bed, but it was plain she had been out of bed long enough to do something to her appearance before getting back into it in order to give the impression that she had not yet gotten up.
“I sent Paul off to amuse Unne,” he said, curling up on the coverlet. He felt boyish. But then the last time he had curled up on Lette’s coverlet was two wives and five or six Pauls and four novels and fifteen years ago, when he had been staying with her in Beverly Hills. The posture erased the interval.
She must
Now he was miserable in comfort, which meant that, except at three in the morning, when his sleeping pill didn’t work, he was never miserable. He enjoyed his life very much. He never tired of watching it. “You will admit that, if it was not life, it was magnificent,” said Fitzgerald once, speaking up from squalor, of the carpeted existence of the rich. Being rich himself now, Charlie agreed. Nor had he ever been tempted to slash his wrists over a chorus boy. Suicide he left to Seneca and the proper time. The world is full of chorus boys, the woods are full of wives, but we have only one pair of wrists. He always treated razor blades with caution. There is a temptation in them, even though we do not feel it. They have the seductiveness of all dangerous things. If we are to survive we must lash ourselves to the mast.
Of course to write books is only to play with dolls, but it is by playing with dolls that a child learns how people behave. So Charlie found the work interesting enough.
To be second-rate is not the same as to be a fraud. If you are a fraud you worry. If you are second-rate, you are allowed to putter and to have your vanities. He liked to spend all morning searching for the mot juste to fit in a passage that didn’t really deserve one. A good brood over the alchimie du verbe was thoroughly enjoyable. Because of course itdidn’t matter. He could afford to fribble away his time that way, and since he could not succeed, he did not have to worry lest he fail.
However, though he liked the contiguity of the world, he never could abide someone in the same rooms while he was working, so he got up and told Paul to take Unne downstairs for a drink and leave him in peace.
To his surprise, Paul seemed to like the idea. But instead of getting peace, Charlie just found himself thinking about Lotte. He called her up.
“I’m still in bed.”
“I’ve seen you in bed before.”
The number of people who were allowed in to that presence before it had its face on must be limited, but he was one of the permissible. She hesitated, and then told him yes, to come along.
Going down the hotel corridor it occurred to him that he had read in Musil (though Charlie never read authors when they first came out, he did believe in being on to the latest thing, so he always read them when they were revived) the idea that people live in hotels because it gives them the illusion of living in a country house, and they can’t afford a country house any more.
Suppose, then—it was another one of Charlie’s imaginary novels (in reality Charlie wrote only about the more expensive sort of refugee, or about his own past, though not often, since he couldn’t remember his own past very well, not having had one)—that you took one of those charming tales by Turgenev, in which the world is a country house, Adam has a commission in the army, Eve has just come back from her finishing school, and Razumov, whatever his ideals, wouldn’t hurt a fly really, and moved the setting to a hotel, but to this kind of hotel, a hotel for the resident or at least the migratory rich.
No, it wouldn’t do. Turgenev’s people have all graduated to sports cars, and scorn the brake. That ruins their charm. It has also changed their nature.
He went into Lotte’s sitting room without knocking, and on into the bedroom. She was in bed, but it was plain she had been out of bed long enough to do something to her appearance before getting back into it in order to give the impression that she had not yet gotten up.
“I sent Paul off to amuse Unne,” he said, curling up on the coverlet. He felt boyish. But then the last time he had curled up on Lette’s coverlet was two wives and five or six Pauls and four novels and fifteen years ago, when he had been staying with her in Beverly Hills. The posture erased the interval.
She must
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