Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles Read Free Book Online Page B

by long wooden posts. Thus they formed a kind of arcade to shade the people walking in the street.
    "This architecture is ingenious," remarked Mr. Copperfield. "The streets would be unbearable if one had to walk along them with nothing overhead."
    "You could not stand that, mister," said the cab-driver, "to walk along with nothing over your head."
    "Anyway," said Mrs. Copperfield, "do let's choose one of these hotels quickly and get into it."
    They found one right in the heart of the red-light district and agreed to look at some rooms on the fifth floor. The manager had told them that these were sure to be the least noisy." Mrs. Copperfield, who was afraid of lifts, decided to go up the stairs on foot and wait for her husband to arrive with the luggage. Having climbed to the fifth floor, she was surprised to find that the main hall contained at least a hundred straight-backed dining-room chairs and nothing more. As she looked around, her anger mounted and she could barely wait for Mr. Copperfield to arrive on the lift in order to tell him what she thought of him. "I must get to the Hotel Washington," she said to herself.
    Mr. Copperfield finally arrived, walking beside a boy with the luggage. She ran up to him.
    "It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen," she said.
    "Wait a second, please, and let me count the luggage; I want to make sure it's all here."
    "As far as I'm concerned, it could be at the bottom of the sea—all of it."
    "Where's my typewriter?" asked Mr. Copperfield.
    "Talk to me this minute," said his wife, beside herself with anger.
    "Do you care whether or not you have a private bath?" asked Mr. Copperfield.
    "No, no. I don't care about that. It's not a question of comfort at all. It's something much more than that."
    Mr. Copperfield chuckled. "You're so crazy," he said to her with indulgence. He was delighted to be in the Tropics at last and he was more than pleased with himself that he had managed to dissuade his wife from stopping at a ridiculously expensive hotel where they would have been surrounded by tourists. He realized that this hotel was sinister, but that was what he loved.
    They followed the bellhop to one of the rooms, and no sooner had they arrived there than Mrs. Copperfield began pushing the door backwards and forwards. It opened both ways and could only be locked by means of a little hook.
    "Anyone could break into this room," said Mrs. Copperfield.
    "I dare say they could, but I don't think they would be very likely to, do you?" Mr. Copperfield made a point of never reassuring his wife. He gave her fears their just due. However, he did not insist, and they decided upon another room, with a stronger door.
    Mrs. Copperfield was amazed at her husband's vivacity. He had washed and gone out to buy a papaya.
    She lay on the bed thinking.
    "Now," she said to herself, "when people believed in God they carried Him from one place to another. They carried Him through the jungles and across the Arctic Circle. God watched over everybody, and all men were brothers. Now there is nothing to carry with you from one place to another, and as far as I'm concerned, these people might as well be kangaroos; yet somehow there must be someone here who will remind me of something ... I must try to find a nest in this outlandish place."
    Mrs. Copperfield's sole object in life was to be happy, although people who had observed her behavior over a period of years would have been surprised to discover that this was all.
    She rose from her bed and pulled Miss Goering's present, a manicuring set, from her grip. "Memory," she whispered. "Memory of the things I have loved since I was a child. My husband is a man without memory." She felt intense pain at the thought of this man whom she liked above all other people, this man for whom each thing he had not yet known was a joy. For her, all that which was not already an old dream was an outrage. She got back on her bed and fell sound asleep.
    When she awoke, Mr. Copperfield was