Suddenly, Last Summer Page #9

That's true.

She wouldn't leave her room.

Shut up, Mama.

I would write:

"She woke up early this morning.

She had her coffee, dressed...

...went for a brief walk."

-Who did?

-She did.

I did.

From the Esplanade

to Canal Street...

...as though being pursued

by a pack of Siberian wolves.

Went through all the stop signs.

Couldn't wait for the green signals.

"Where did she think she was going,

back to the Dueling Oaks?"

Everything...

...chilly and dim.

But that hot...

...ravenous mouth.

He was a very ordinary married man.

And then?

One morning, cousin Sebastian

came in and said, "Get up."

Well, if you're still alive

after dying...

...then you're obedient. I got up.

He took me downtown to a place

where they take passport photos.

He said, "Mother can't go abroad

with me this summer.

You're going to go with me

this summer instead of Mother."

-Except that it was her idea, not his.

-Mrs. Venable.

And your cousin?

He helped bring me back to life...

...in Paris, Barcelona, Rome.

All those lovely foreign cities

I'd never seen, we saw together.

And those...

What did he call them?

Those sunshine days...

...where it's always noon,

and we cast no shadows.

But then...

But then what?

At Amalfi...

...high above the Mediterranean,

in a garden, I took his arm.

You took his arm. Yes?

It seemed like such a natural thing

to do, but he pulled away.

How he must have loathed

being touched by her.

I only did it to try and show

my appreciation for his kindness.

I didn't want to...

There was nothing else.

Anyway...

...it was there in Amalfi...

...suddenly, last summer, that

he began to be restless and...

Go on.

He couldn't go on.

He couldn't write his summer poem.

I have his notebook here. See?

Title, "Poem of Summer."

And the date of the summer. 1 937.

And after that, blank pages,

blank pages. Nothing but nothing.

A poet's vocation rests

on something...

...as fine and thin

as the web of a spider.

It's all that holds him

out of destruction.

Very few are able to do it alone.

Great help is needed.

I did give it. She didn't.

She's right about that.

I failed him.

I wasn't able to keep

the web from breaking.

I saw it breaking,

but I couldn't save it.

Now the truth's coming out. Maybe

she'll admit what really happened.

What did happen?

How she killed him.

How she murdered him

at Cabeza de Lobo. Ask her.

What did really happen?

Suddenly, last summer...

...he wasn't young anymore.

We went to Cabeza de Lobo...

...and suddenly, he switched

from the evenings to the beach.

From the evenings to the beach?

I mean, from the evenings

to the afternoons.

Suddenly, cousin Sebastian changed

to the afternoons in the beach.

What kind of a beach was it?

Was it a public beach?

Yes, public.

It's little statements like that

that give her away.

After all I've told you about his

fastidiousness, can you accept that...

...Sebastian would go to some dirty,

free public beach near a harbor?

Whatever she wants to say,

I want her to say it.

Go on.

I don't want to go on.

Every afternoon, you and your cousin

would go to this free public beach?

It wasn't the free one.

The free one was right next to it.

There was a fence

between the free beach...

...and the beach that we went to

that charged admission.

Did anything happen there

that disturbed you?

-Yes.

-What?

He bought me a bathing suit

I didn't want to wear.

I laughed.

I said, "I can't wear that.

Why, it's a scandal

to the jaybirds."

What do you mean?

Was this suit immodest?

It was a one-piece bathing suit.

Made of white something.

But the water made it transparent.

I told him I didn't want

to swim in it...

...but he just grabbed my hand

and dragged me into the water...

...all the way in...

...and I came out looking naked.

Why did he do that?

Do you know why he did that?

Yes.

To attract attention.

Why? Because he thought

you were lonely?

Did he think he could shock you

out of your depression?

You know why I was doing it.

I told you.

I was procuring for him.

Sebastian was lonely, doctor.

That empty blue jay notebook

got bigger and bigger.

So big, it was big and empty...

...like that big, empty, blue sea

and sky.

And before long, when the weather

was warmer and the beach so crowded...

...he didn't need me anymore

for that purpose.

The ones from the free beach climbed

over the fence or swam around it.

So now he let me wear

a decent dark suit.

I'd go to a faraway end of

the beach and write post cards...

...and letters and keep up

my third person journal...

...till it was time to meet him

outside the bathhouses on the street.

He would come out...

...followed.

Who'd follow him?

The hungry young people that climbed

over the fence from the free beach.

He'd pass out tips among them,

as if they'd all...

...shined his shoes

or called taxis for him.

Each day the crowd got bigger...

...noisier, greedier.

At last, we stopped going out there.

And after that? After you stopped

going to the public beach?

Then one day...

...a few days after we'd stopped

going out to the beach...

...it was a blazing white day.

Not a blazing hot, blue day,

but a blazing hot, white one.

We had a late lunch at a shabby,

lonely restaurant by the sea there.

Sebastian was white as the weather.

He had on a white silk suit,

a white tie, a white Panama.

And he kept touching his face

and his throat here and there...

...with a white silk handkerchief...

...and popping little white pills

into his mouth all the time.

I knew he was having a bad time with

his heart and that it frightened him.

"Let's go north," he kept on saying.

"I think we've done Cabeza de Lobo.

I think we've done it, don't you?"

I thought we'd done it.

Then there were those children

along the beach...

...which was fenced off with wire

from the restaurant.

Our table was less than a yard away

from the wire fence.

And those children...

There was a band of them.

They looked like a flock

of plucked birds...

...and they came darting up

to the wire fence...

...as if they'd been blown

there by the wind...

...by the hot, white wind

from the sea.

They were all calling out,

"Pan! Pan! Pan!"

They were calling for bread?

They made gobbling noises

with their mouths...

...stuffing their fists

into their mouths and making...

...gobbling noises

with frightful grins.

We were sorry we'd come to the place,

but it was too late to go.

Why was it too late to go?

I told you. Cousin Sebastian

wasn't well.

His eyes looked dazed.

But he said, "Don't look

at those little monsters.

Beggars are a social disease

in this country.

If you look at them, you'll

get sick of the country.

It spoils the whole country for you."

Go on.

Go on.

Go on.

I am going on.

The band of children began

to serenade us.

-Began to what?

-Play for us on instruments...

...make music, if you

could call it music.

Their instruments were the instruments

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