Martha Gellhorn: Miami-New York

Martha Gellhorn

Miami—New York

FROM The Atlantic Monthly, 1948

THERE WERE FIVE Air Force sergeants and they got in the plan and found seats and began to call each other across the aisle or over the chair backs, saying. How about it, Joe, I guess this is the way to travel, or saying. Where do they keep the parachutes? or saying, Boy, I’ve got a pillow, what do you know! They wre loud and good-natured for a moment, very young, and young in their new importance of being bomber crews, and they wanted the other people, the civilians, to know that they belonged in a different, fiercer world.

There were a half dozen of the men who seemed always to be going to or coming from Washington, the men with gray suits, hats, hair, skins, and with brown calf brief cases. These have no definite age and curiously similar faces, and are all equally tired and quiet. They always put their hats in the rack above the seat and sit down with their brief cases on their laps. Later they open their brief cases and look at sheets of typed or mimeographed paper, or they go to sleep.

The stewardess was young, with blonde hair hanging to her shoulders. She had a neat body of the right height and weight, and a professionally friendly voice. Fasten your seat belts, please, she said. Would you like some chewing gum? Fasten your seat belts, please, sir. Chewing gum?

A woman who had traveled a great deal in planes, and never trusted them because she understood nothing about them, sat in the double front seat behind the magazine rack. This was the best seat, as she knew, because there was enough room to stretch your legs. Also you could see well from here, if you wanted to see. Now, for a moment she looked out the window and saw the few palm trees at the far edge of the field were blowing out in heavy plumes against the sky. There was something so wrong about Miami that even a beautiful night, sharp with stars, only seemed a real-estate advertisement. The woman pulled off her earrings and put them carelessly in her coat pocket. She ran her hands through her very short dark upcurling hair, deliberately making herself untidy for the night ahead. She lunched her shoulders to ease the tired stiffness in her neck and slouched down in the chair. She had just leaned her head against the chair back and was thinking of nothing when the man’s voice said, Is this place taken?No, she said without looking at him. She moved nearer to the window. Anyhow, she said to herself, only eight or ten hours or whatever it is to New Yor; even if her snores, he can’t snore all the time.

The plane taxied into position, turned, the propellers whirled until in the arc lights of the field they were great silver disks, the motor roared, and the plane started that run down the field that always, no matter now many times you had sat it out, no matter in how many countries, and no matter on how many fields, had fields, dangerous fields, in whatever weather, always stopped your heart for one moment as you wanted to see if this time it would work again, if this time, as all the other times, the enormous machine would rise smoothly into the air where no one really belonged except the birds.

“Made it!” the man said softly to himself.

She looked at him then. He had said it as she would have said it, with wonder, with a perpetual amazement that the trick worked.

He turned to her and she could see he wanted to talk. She would only have to say yes, and smile, or say “nice take-off”, or say, “what a lovely night”; anything would do. but she was not going to say anything and he was not going to talk to her if she could help it. I have ten hours, she said in her mind to the man, and she said it threateningly, and they are mine and I don’t have to talk to anyone and don’t try. The man, finding her face closed against him, turned away, pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, and made a great distance between them, smoking and looking straight ahead.

She could not ignore him though he did nothing to force her attention. She had seen him without really looking; he was a navy lieutenant and the braid on his cap, which he still held, was grayish black; his stripes and the active-duty star were tarnished: his uniform looked unpressed, and he had a dark weather-dried sunburn. His hair was a colorless blond, so short that it seemed he must have shaved his head and now the hair was just growing in, a month’s growth probably.

With resentment, because she did not want to notice him, she studied him now, not caring if he turned his head and caught her. She looked at him with unfriendly professional eyes, the beady eye of the painter, her husband called it. the man’s face, in response, looked brooding and angry; the whole face was square. His eyebrows lay flat and black above his eyes, his mouth did not curve at all, and his chin seemed to make another straight line. There were three horizontal lines marked one after the other across his face, and blocked in by the hard bones of his jaw. But when he had turned to her, wanting to talk, he had been smiling and his face had been oval then, with all the lines flared gayly upwards. Perhaps the gayety came from his eyes, which were china blue, or was it his mouth, she thought, trying to remember. It was a very interesting face: it belonged to two different men. She wondered where he had picked up this dark, thinking angry man, who showed on his face now.

Damn, she said to herself, what do I care? Let him have six faces. But it was a fine problem. How could you paint one face and make it at the same time square and oval, gay and longingly friendly, but also shut-in, angry and indifferent.

___________

I wonder what she’s sore about, the man thought mildly behind his complicated face. She doesn’t look as if she was the type of woman who’s sore all the time. pretty women weren’t usually sore all the time. He could place her, in a vague general way, as people of the same nationality can place each other. She had money and she had taste; her clothes were not only expensive and fashionable, which was frequent, they were the right clothes and she wore them without concern. He had not heard her voice but he imagined what it would be. Eastern, he thought, rather English. She would see things like, it’s heaven, or he’s energetic, or what a ghastly bore, saying it all without emphasis. She would be spoiled, as they all were and at a loose end as they all were too. But her face was better than most. He did not think of women as stupid or not stupid. He simply thought her face was not like everyone’s, it was small and pointed and even though she was sore, she could not make her face look dead. It was a lively face and her eyebrows grew in a feather line upwards over very bright, very dark eyes. her hands were beautiful too, and he noticed, looking at them slantwise and secretly, that the nail varnish was cracking and she had broken or chewed off the nail of her right pointer finger. It was childish and careless to have such nails, and he liked that best about her. Sore as a goat, he thought mildly to himself. Then he forgot her.

He relaxed, behind the angry square of this second face that he had never seen and did not know about. He relaxed and enjoyed himself, thinking of noting, but simply enjoying being alive and being home or almost home. he had been gone eighteen months, and without ever saying it to himself, because he made no poses, not even practical, realistic poses, he had often doubted that he would get back. Whenever he began almost to think about not ever getting back (and this was different from thinking about dying, there was something like self-pity about not getting back whereas dying was just a thing that could happen) he would say to himself, grim and mocking, life on a destroyer is a big educational experience; you ought to be grateful.

He had worked briefly in his father’s mills before he became an office on a destroyer, but he did not want to be a businessman again. Or rather he could not remember what it was like, being a man in an office, so he had not interest in it. he did not want anything now except to be happy. He was happy. He rested behind his face and told himself how fine and comfortable the seat and what a fine time he’d had last night in Miami with Bob Jamison and those two beauties and what a fine time he would have tomorrow and all the other days. Oh, boy, he said to himself, and stretched all through his body without moving, and felt the fine time bathing him like soft water and sunlight.

No doubt he has a splendid little wife waiting for him, the woman thought. He is evidently going home and from the looks of him, his face and his clothes, he has been somewhere. He was ribbons sewn to his blue serge chest. Ribbons could mean something or nothing; every man in uniform that she knew had ribbons. They rode nobly and with growing boredom from their homes on the subway down to Church Street and presently they had ribbons. They lived in expensive over crowdedness in Washington and wandered around the Pentagon building and went to cocktail parties in Georgetown and had ribbons. There were, for instance, those two faintly aging glamour boys, with silver eagles on their shoulders and enough ribbons to trim hats, who had just returned from London. She had always known these two and she was prepared to believe that they knew as much about war as she did, and she was certain that they had never ventured much farther afield than, say, Piccadilly Circus, in case they worked in Grosvenor Square. So what teal ribbons were or what they meant, she did not know. However, looking at this man, she thought that his ribbons would mean something. His wife would know about the ribbons at once, if she did not know already, and she would be very proud. Why shouldn’t she be, the woman asked herself irritably, what have you got against wives?

Am I not in fact a service wife myself? she thought. Could I not wear a pin with one star on it, a little oblong pin made of enamel if you haven’t much money, but you can get it in sapphires, diamonds, and rubies if you feel that way? Have I not just returned from seeing my husband off in Miami? Thomas, she said to herself, is so used to getting what he wants that he believes the emotions will also perform as he wishes. A man is leaving for service overseas; he has forty-eight hours leave; his wife flies to him to say good-bye; they have forty-eight lovely last hours together and the lovely last hours were like being buried alive, though still quite alive so you knew all about it, with a stranger whom you ought to love but there it is, he is a stranger. Fine wife, she told herself, everyone handles this perfectly; all women manage to run their hearts smoothly; patriotism, pride, tenderness, farewell, homesickness. I’m not such a bitch as all that, she thought, defending herself; Thomas is only going to Brazil. I wouldn’t mind going to Brazil myself. I should think he’d be enchanted to go to Brazil. As long as you aren’t dong your own work, it’s far better to be in Brazil than in Miami or Pensacola or the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Only, if I were a real wife, a good wife, a service wife, I’d have made more of a thing of his going. Why does he want to be fooled, she thought angrily, why does he insist on fooling himself? Why does he go on about loving me when I am everything he dislikes and distrusts? She could hear Thomas now, and her heart moved with pity despite the anger. I love you more than anything, Kate, you know that; I only want you to be happy. Thomas believed it while he said it, and she felt herself to be cold and hard and ungrateful and somehow hideous, because she did not believe it at all.

She groaned and moved her body as if it were in pain. The man beside her turned, and stared, but he could not see her face. All he saw was the stiff line of her right shoulder, hunched up away from him. The woman was saying to herself, desperately, forget it, forget it. there is nothing to do. it cannot be understood; leave it alone. you cannot know so much about yourself, you cannot know why you thought you loved a man, nor why you think you no longer love him. It is not necessary to know. It’s an enormous world, she told herself, with millions of people in it; if you’re not even interested in yourself why can’t you stop thinking about your own dreary little life? Thomas will be gone months, a year, two years. Stop thinking about it! she ordered herself.

Suddenly, and without any sort of plan or direction from her brain, she pulled the great square diamond engagement ring and the baguette diamond wedding ring from her left hand, pulling them off brutally as if they would not come unless she forced them, and she thrust the two rings into her coat pocket with her earrings. Then she rubbed her left hand, crushing the bones of the hand together and pulling at the fingers. The man beside her, who had seen all this, said to himself, “Well, for God’s sake, what goes on here? What is she doing?” She’s not sore, he thought. She’s nuts. Then he amended that thought; nuts, or in some trouble of her own. He wanted no part of trouble; he did not understand it really. Living had become so simple for him that he understood nothing now except being or staying alive.

___________

The stewardess turned off the overhead lights in the plane and one by one the small reading lights on the walls were turned off and presently the plane was dark. The bright grayish night gleamed in through the windows. Two of the men from Washington snored weakly and one of the Air Force sergeants snored very loudly as if he enjoyed snoring became a part of the plane sounds, and everything was quiet. The woman with the short, upcurling hair slept in a twisted sideways heap. The lieutenant leaned his head quietly against the chair back and stretched out his legs and settled himself without haste to sleep until morning.

In sleep his face was even more square and brooding. He seemed to be dreaming something that made him cold with anger or despair. He was not dreaming: it could not be a dream because it was always the same when he slept. It was as if he went to a certain place to sleep. This place was an enormous darkness: it moved a little but it was not a darkness made up of air or water, it was a solid darkness like being blind. Only the dark something around him had weight and he was under it: he was all alone, lying or floating, at ease, in no pain, pursued by nothing, but simply living in absolute aloneness in the weight of the dark. He could not see himself, he could only feel himself there. It was terrible because there seemed no way to get out, and yet he did not struggle. He lay there every night and every night he was trapped in it forever, and every morning when he woke he was grateful and astonished though he did not remember why, as he did not remember the place where he had been sleeping.

This sleeping in a complete empty heavy darkness had come on him, gradually, on the ship. He knew nothing about himself at the time and considered himself an ordinary man, quite lucky, doing all right, with nothing on his mind. Nothing had happened to him that had not happened to hundreds of other men. Even talking, in the ward-room, with others of his kind he recognized himself and knew there was nothing special about him. They talked very badly, without thought and without even knowing how to manage their language. It was almost like sign language the way they talked. But surely he felt what they all did.

When the first destroyer was sunk by a bomb, and he jumped overboard (but not nearly so far as he always imagined it would be — it didn’t seem any father than jumping from the high dive at the country club) and swam around and found a raft, he had first been mindless with fury. He did not know what the fury came from: was it because they were hunted and hurled in the sea, was it rage against their own helplessness, was he furious to lose the ship for which he felt now a strong unexpected love, was it fury for himself alone, fury at this outrageous tampering with life? He was so angry that he could not see or think; he did not remember swimming and he did not know how he had gone to the raft. Then the fear came as he watched the Japanese planes, so close above the water, searching them out where they splashed like driven terrified water beetles or hung together like leeches on a log. The fear was as cold as the water and made him weak and nauseated; then it too went. They were picked up very quickly; nothing had happened to him.

There was another time when he stood behind the forward gun crew and seemed to have nothing to do himself. He watched the sailor firing the Oerlikon and saw his body bucking against the crutch-like supports of the gun, and he saw the faint bright stream of the bullets, but the man behind the Oerlikon seemed terribly slow, everything seemed slow, he himself had never had so much time and so little to do. this must have lasted a few seconds, but it was a large quiet piece of time and his mind said clearly: this is crazy, what are we all doing? Then his mind said it much louder: this is crazy. Finally he was not sure he had not shouted it out, because the thought was bursting in his mind. This is crazy.

Even that was not very remarkable; most of the other men thought everything was pretty screwy. You had to kill the laps after they started it all, naturally you couldn’t let them get away with it. you had to do it since that was how things were, but it was crazy all the same. If you began to think about it, about yourself and all the men you knew out here in this big god awful ocean, to hell and gone from anywhere you every wanted to be, and what you were doing and what everybody was doing everywhere, it was too crazy to think about. Then if you tried to think how it all started and what it was about and what difference it would make afterwards, you went crazy yourself. He had not actually talked this over with anyone but he knew the others felt as he did, Bob Jamison and Truby Bartlett and Joe Parks and the other men he knew well.

They all agreed in a simple easy way: they were the age that ws in this war, fi you’d been older or younger they wouldn’t be, but this was what had happened and this was what they had to do. you made a lot of jokes and longed loudly for tangible things, liquor and a fine room at the Waldorf or the St. Francis, depending on tase, with a handy beauty. You played bridge or poker when you had a chance, for higher stakes than before. Time passed, you were the same man you always were. All you had to do was stay alive if you could.

Yet every night he went to this empty solid darkness and was forever buried in it, without hope or escape or anyone to call to.

___________

The man, who had been asleep, woke suddenly and found his face ten inches f rom the woman’s face. She had turned towards him in her sleep. Her eyes were closed and she looked very pale, tired, and a little ill. Her mouth was wonderfully soft. The man was not quite awake and he looked with surprise at this face he had not expected to see, and thought, she’s lonely. He was thinking better than he would have done, had he been awake and protected by a long habit of not noticing and not thinking. She’s sick lonely, he thought to himself. Without intending to, he leaned toward those soft lips. there was the face, waiting and needing to be kissed. Then he woke enough to remember where he was, and stopped himself, shocked, and thought, God, if I’d done it, she’d probably have called out and there’d have been a hell of a gong on. He sighed and turned away from her and let his body relax, and slept again.

The plane skidded a little in the wind; it seemed to be forcing itself powerfully through air as heavy as water. The people in the plane slept or held themselves quietly. The plane began to smell close, smelling of bodies and night and old cigarette smoke.

Suddenly the woman felt a hand on her hair. The hand was not gentle; it pressed down the rumpled curly dark hair and stroked once from the forehead back to the nape of her neck. She woke completely but did not move, being too startled and confused to understand what had happened. The hand now left her hair and with harsh assurance rested on her breast. She could feel it through the thin tweed of her coat. She wondered whether she was dreaming this; it was so unlikely, that she must be dreaming, and in the dark plane she could not see the hand. She looked over at the man and saw his face, dimly. He was asleep, with that troubled brooding look on his face. The hand was quiet, heavy and certain. The hand held and demanded her. What is he doing, she wondered. My God, what is happening here! They certainly come back odd, she thought, with a kind of shaky hand on her mind.

The hand insisted, and suddenly, to her amazement, and to her shame, she knew that she wanted to lie against him, she wanted him to put his arms around her and hold her, with two silent unrequesting ownership. She wanted him to wake and hold her and kiss her. It did not matter who she was or who he was, and the other people in the plane did not matter. They were here together in the night and this incredible thing that had happened had actually happened and she did not want to stop it. She turned to him.

When she moved, the man sighed, still sleeping, and his hand fell from her, rested a moment on her lap, and then slowly dragged back, as if of its own will and apart from the man, and lay flat along his side. She waited, watching him, and and presently her eyes woke him. He saw eh woman’s troubled, sad, somehow questioning face and the soft lips that asked to be kissed. He moved his right arm and pulled her as close to him as he could, but there was something between them though he was too sleepy to notice what it was, and he kissed her. He kissed her as if they had already made love, taking all that went before for granted. Having waked up in other places, and not known exactly what had happened, only knowing there was someone to kiss, he did not feel surprised now. Lovely lips, he thought happily. Then he notices with real surprise that this thing into his side was the arm of the chair and then he knew where he was. The woman had pulled away from him and from his owning arm and he assured possessive mouth.

‘I’m Kate Merlin,’ she whispered idiotically. She sounded panic stricken.

The man laughed softly. He did not see what anyone’s name had to do with it, but did not want to be left behind. He liked to always raise a bet. ‘I’m John Hanley,’ he said.

‘How do you do?’ she said, and felt both ridiculous and mad, and suddenly laughed too.

‘Let’s get rid of the obstruction.’ he said. The woman was frightened. He took everything so calmly. Did he imagine that she always kissed the man sitting next t other on the night plane from Miami? The lieutenant worked at the arm of the chart until he discovered how to get it loose. He laid it on the floor in front of his feet. She was leaning forward and away from him, not knowing what to say in order to explain to him that she really wasn’t a woman who could be kissed strangers on places, in case that happened to be a well-known category of woman.

He said nothing that was evidently his specialty, she thought. He got everywhere without opening his mouth. His body spoke for him. He collected her, as if she belonged to him and could not have any other idea herself. He brought her close again, raised her head so that it was comfortable for him, and kissed her. The harsh and certain hand held her as before.

This is time, the man thought. It was part of the fine time in Miami, and part of the fine time that would follow. He seemed to have a lot of luck – but why not, sometimes you did have luck, and he had felt all along that this leave was going to be wonderful. He had waited for it with such confidence that it could not fail him. Now he would kiss, this lovely strange soft woman, and then they would go to sleep together. There was nothing else they could do on a place, which was a pity, but it was foolish to worry about something you couldn’t have. Just be very damn grateful about the opportunity that is presenting itself uninvited, and that it is as fine as it is. You might have been sitting next to the Air Force, he thought with amusement, and what would you have then? She smelled of gardenias and her hair was delicious and like feathers against her cheek. He leaned forward to kiss her again, feeling warm and melted and unhurried and happy.

‘How did you know?’ the woman said. She seemed to have trouble speaking.

‘Know what?’

‘That you could kiss me.’

Oh God, he thought, we’re going to have to talk about it. Why in hell did she want to talk?

‘I didn’t know anything,’ he said. ‘I didn’t plan anything.’

‘Who are you?’ She didn’t mean that, she meant, how did it happen?

‘Nobody!’ He said with conviction. ‘Absolutely nobody. Who are you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Don’t let it worry you…’ he said, gently. He was beginning to feel impatient on this aimless talk. ‘Aren’t we having a fine time?’

She took in her breath, rigid with distaste. So that was what it was. Just like that, it might have happened with anyone. Come on, baby, give us a kiss, isn’t this fun. Oh, Lord, she thought, what have I got myself into now? She wanted to say to him: ‘I have never done something like this in my life, you must not think.’ She wanted him to appreciate that this was rare and therefore important; it could not have happened any night with any man. It had to be alone of its kind, or she could not accept it.

The man again used silence, which he handled far better than words and again he simply allowed his body to make what explanations seemed necessary. She felt herself helpless and glad to be helpless. But she could not let him think her only a willing woman; how would she face him in the morning it that was all he understood?

“You see…” she began.

He kissed her so that she would not talk and he said, with his lips moving very slightly against her: “It’s all right. You don’t need to say anything.”

She took that as she needed it, making it mean everything she wanted him to think. She was still amazed but she was full of delight. She felt there had been nothing in her life but talk and reasons, and the talk had been wrong and the reasons proved pointless: here was something that had happened at once, by itself, without a beginning, and it was right because it was like magic.

The man pressed her head against his shoulder, pulled her gently sideways to make her comfortable, leaned his head against the chair back, and prepared to sleep. He felt contented, but if he went on kissing her much longer, since there was nothing further he could do about her now, it might get to be tiresome and thwarted and wearing. It had been good and now it was time to sleep; he was very tired. He kissed the top of her head, remembering her, that she was there as well, and said, “Sleep well.”

___________

Long ragged gray clouds disordered the sky. The moon was like an illuminated target in a shooting gallery, moving steadily ahead of them. the place was colder now and one of the Air Force sergeants coughed himself awake, swore, blew his nose, sighed, shifted his position, and went back to uncomfortable sleep. The stewardess wondered whether she ought to make an inspection tour of her passengers and decided that it was not truly necessary; they all were all right. She was reading a novel about society people in a country house in England, which fascinated her.

The woman lay easily against the lieutenant’s shoulder and let her mind float in a smooth warm dream of pleasure. After the months of gnawing unlove, this man sat beside her in a plane in the night, and she no longer needed to dread herself as a creature who loved nothing. She did not love this man but she loved how she felt, she loved this warmth and aliveness and this hope. Now she made plans that were like those faultless daydreams in which one is always beautiful and the heroine and every day is more replete with miracles than the next. he would stay in New York, at her house even, since she was alone. or would it be better if they went to a hotel so that there would be nothing to remind her of her ordinary life? They would treat New York as if it were a foreign city, Vienna in the spring, she thought. They would find new odd little places to eat, and funny places along Broadway to dance, they would walk in Central Park and go to the Aquarium and the Bronx Zoo; they would sightsee and laugh and meet no one they knew and be alone in a strange, wonderful city. Someday he would have to go back where he came from, and she would go back to her work, but they would have this now and it was more than she had ever hoped for or imagined that life could be. And she would paint his strange face and mannerisms that were two completely different faces altogether, and he would be fresh and exciting every day and every night, with his silence and his fantastic assurance and his angry look and his happy look, like the masks in theatrical representations.

The plane circles the field at Washington and seemed to plunge onto the runway. The thump of the wheels striking the cement runway woke the man. He sat up a bit confused and stared about him, trying to find out his whereabouts.

“Put the chair arm back,” the woman whispered. “Good morning.”

She did not want the stewardess to look at her with a smile or a question. Her hair must be very soft; she would like to touch it, but not now. She looked at him with loving intimate eyes and the man looked at her, quite stupidly, as if he had never seen her before.

“The chair arm,” she reminded him again.

The man grinned suddenly and picked up the chair arm and fitted it back into its place. Then he turned to the woman and his face was merry, almost jovial.

“Sleep well?” he said.

“I didn’t sleep.” She had not imagined his face so gay, as if he were laughing at them both.

“Too bad. Well!” he said. “I think I’ll go and stretch my legs. Coming?”

“No, thank you,” she said, terrified now.

The Air Force sergeants jostled each other getting out of the plane. One of them called to the stewardess.

“Don’t leave without us, honey.” one of them said too loud, so that many of the the passengers could hear.

The rest of the sergeants laughed and crossed the cement runway, rushing to the airport building, tugging at their crumpled up clothes, tightening their belts, as it they had just come out of a wrestling match. The men with briefcases took their hats and coats from the stewardess and thanked her in gray voices for a pleasant journey, and walked away quickly as if they were afraid of being late to their offices and their banking appointments.

In the front seat, Kate Merlin sat alone and listened to the stewardess talking with some of the ground crew: their voices were very bright and awake for this hour of the morning. Kate Merlin felt cold and a little sick and dismal, but she would not allow herself to think about it.

Then he was back beside her and the stewardess was moving down the aisle, like a trained nurse taking temperatures in a hospital ward, to see that they were all properly strapped in for the take-off. they fastened their seat belts again and then the plane was high in the mauve-gray early morning sky.

“Do I remember you said your name was Kate Merlin?”

“Yes.”

“Think of that.”

How did he said it? she wondered. How? Complacently?

He was evidently not going to say anything more right now. She looked out the window and her hands were cold. The man was thinking: ‘Well, that’s funny. Funny how unexpected things happen.’

He had remembered the night, clearly, while he was walking up and down the cement pavement by the airport building in Washington. It had seemed strange to him, in the morning, but now it seemed less strange. Being an artist, he told himself, they’re all a little queer. He had never met an artist before but he was ready to believe that they were not like other people. And being too rich, too, he thought, that would make her even queerer. The extremely rich were known to be unlike other people. Her husband, but his name wasn’t Merlin, was terrifically rich. He’d read about them: their names, like many other names, seemed to be a sort of tangible asset – like bonds, jewels, or real estate – of the New York columnists. Her husband had inherited millions and owned a famous stable and plane factories or some kind of factories. Thomas Sterling Hamilton, that was his name. it seemed peculiar, her being a successful painter, when her husband was so rich and she didn’t need to.

“I’ve read about you.” He remarked.

‘I have read nothing about you,’ she thought. ‘What am I supposed to say: you have the advantage of me, sir?’

“I even remember one.” He said in a pleased voice. “It said something about how your clients, or whatever you call them, were glad to pay thousands for your portraits because you always made them look dangerous. It said that was probably even more flattering than looking beautiful. The women, that is, I wonder where I read it.”

It was too awful; it was sickening. It must have been some revolting paragraph in a gossip column. She would surely have been called a society portrait painter and there would be a bit about Thomas and his money.

“What does a painter do during the war?” he asked.

“Paints.” She said, as bluntly as she could.

Then it seemed too selfish to her and though she was ashamed to be justifying herself to the man. She said quickly:

“I don’t know how to do anything but paint. I give the money to the Russian Relief or the Chinese Relief or the Red Cross, things like that. It seems the most useful thing I can do, since I’m only trained as a painter.”

She stopped, horrified at what she had done. What had made her go into a whining explanation, currying favor with this man so he would see what a splendid citizen she really was.

“That’s fine.”

The civilians were all busy as bird dogs for the war, as he very well knew, and it was very fine of them and all that, but it embarrassed him to hear about it. he felt they expected him to be personally grateful and he was not grateful, he did not care what anybody did; he wasn’t running this war. Then he thought: ‘This isn’t at all like last night, when I thought we had understood each other.’

He looked at the woman and saw that she looked even better in the morning – she was even more attractive than the night before. It was amazing how a woman could sit up all night in a plane and look so clean and attractive. He felt his beard rough on his face and his eyes were still sleepy and very sticky. She looked delicious, and then he remembered how soft she had been in his arms and he wondered what to do about it now.

“I imagined Kate Merlin would be older,” he said, thinking aloud.

It was only then that she realized how young he really was, twenty-four or perhaps even less. His silence and his assurance and his closed dark second face had made him seem older, or else she had not thought about it at all. ‘What am I becoming?’ she wondered. ‘Am I going to be one of those women without husbands who hunt young men?’

“I’m old enough,” she said curtly.

He turned and smiled at her. His eyes said, I know about you, don’t tell me; I know who you are. Only that his eyes were speaking without words.

It was the man of last night again, the certain one, the one whose body spoke for him. This talent he had when he was silent worked on her like a spell.

He seemed to understand him and very easily he reached his hand over and rested it on the back of her neck, where her ahir grew up in soft duck feathers. Her body relaxed under this owning hand.

“Yes, I am.” she said dreamily, as if he had contradicted her. “I’m thirty-five.”

“Are you?” he asked.

She could feel his hand change. It was quite different. It was a hand that had made a mistake and did not know where it was. It was a hand that would soon move away and become polite.

The man was thinking, thirty-five, well, that is old enough. That makes it something else again. And being an artist, he said to himself uneasily. It seemed to him that there was a trick somewhere; he had gotten into something he did not understand. She probably knew more than he did. She had perhaps been playing him along. Perhaps she was thinking he was pretty simple and inexperience and was amused at how he came up for the bait.

The woman felt that something very bad, very painful, was happening, but she could not name it and she held on to her plans of last night because they were happy and they were what she wanted. She said, in a tight voice, and mistrusting the words as she spoke them, “Will you be staying in New York?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. Speaking gave him a chance to take his hand away and light a cigarette. It might be fun in New York, he thought, meeting all those famous people she would know. He could go with her to El Morocco and the Colony and those places and see her kind of people. She would be something he hadn’t had before, thirty-five and a celebrity and all. it might be fun. But he felt uneasy about it; this was not his familiar country. This was not how he saw a fine time, exactly. It was complicated, not safe, you would not know what you were doing. And how about her husband?

“Don’t you know?” she said.

He did not like that. That sounded like giving orders. That sounded to him as if she meant to take him over. He was suspicious of her at once.

“No,” he said. His face wore the shut-in, indifferent look.

“What might you be doing?” she insisted. Oh, stop it, she told herself, for God’s sake, stop it. What are you doing now; do you want to prove it to yourself?

“I´ll be going home first,” he said. Give it to her, he thought. He didn’t like that bossy, demanding way she suddenly had. “Springfield,” he added. She would be thinking now that he was a small-town boy from Massachusetts and that was all right with him.

Then he thought with sudden pleasure of Springfield; he would have a fine time there for a while, a fine time that he understood. He might go on to Boston, where he knew his way around, and have a different but still excellent sort of time. later, at the end, he would go to New York for a few days but by himself, on his own terms. He did not want to get mixed up. He did not want anything that he could not manage. He just wanted to have a good easy time with nothing to worry about. She wasn’t in his league; he didn’t know about married rich, famous women of thirty-five.

The woman felt so cold that she had to hold herself carefully so that she would not shiver. A middle-aged woman, she told herself with horror, hounding a young man. That was what he thought. She had offered herself to him and he had rejected her. He did not want her. She was too old. If only the plane would move faster; if only they would get there so she could hide from him. If only she did not have to sit beside him, sick with the knowledge of what he thought, and sick with shame for herself. She did not know how to protect herself from the shock of this rejection.

The plane flew north along the East River and in the fresh greenish-blue light the city appeared below them. it looked like a great ancient ruin. The towers were vast pillars, planted in the mist, with sharp splintered tops. The squarish skyscrapers were old white temples or giant forts, and there was no life in the jagged quarry of buildings. It was beautiful enough to rock the heart, and suddenly the woman imagined it would look like this, thousands of years from now, enormous and dead.

The man leaned forward to look out of the window.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he said.

He had really said that and he meant it. That was all he saw. But then it was all right. Whatever he thought of her did not matter; he was too stupid to care about. But she knew this was a lie; nothing had changed. There was the fact and there was no way to escape it; he could have had her and simply did not want her.

They were the last people off the plane. The other passengers had seemed to block their way on purpose. The woman sent a porter to find a taxi. She would escape from his presence at least, as quickly as she could. When the man saw the taxi stopping before them he said, “Not taking the airline car?”

“No.” She did not offer to give him a lift in town. Oh hurry, she thought. The man started to move her bags to the taxi. “Don’t bother,” she said. “The porter will manage.”

He seemed a little puzzled by this flight.

“Good luck,” he said, shutting the door behind her. “Hope I’ll see you again some place.” It was a thing to say, that was all.

“Good luck to you,” she said, and hoped her voice was light and friendly. She did not actually look at him.

“Where to, Miss?” the taxi driver asked.

She gave her address and pretended not to see the man saluting good-bye from the curb.

It might have been fun, the man thought, as he watched the taxi turn and head towards the highway. Oh no, hell, he told himself, complications. It was better this way. he began to feel relieved and then he put the whole business out of his mind; he did not want to clutter up his mind with questions or problems and perhaps spoil some of his leave. He thought about Springfield and his face was oval now, smiling. He was in a hurry to get in town and get started. He would not let himself consider the good time ahead in numbered days; he was thinking, now, now, now. He had erased the woman entirely; she was finished and gone.

After the cab passed the gates of the airport, the woman leaned back and took a deep breath to steady herself and to ease the pain in her throat. She covered her eyes with her hand. It’s just that I’m so tired, she told herself. This was what she would have to believe. It’s nothing to feel desperate about. It’s just that I’m so tired, she thought, forcing herself to believe. It’s only because I’ve been sitting up all night in a plane.

Taken from

https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.vmi.edu/dist/f/1818/files/2015/09/Gellhorn-258g03v.pdf