Old Acquaintance by David Stacton Page A

lovely light in that Venetian bedroom (it was the bedroom from Carpaccio’s Dream of St. Ursula, but with a tousled, intimate bed). It was a pity that it did not and could not now exist.
    They were completely compatible. They had never had even the whim to touch.
    The only truthful autobiography, perhaps, would be an accurate description of the life we hoped to live.

XIX
    “ YOU like Charlie very much, don’t you?” asked Unne.
    “He’s an old friend.”
    “He’s married, isn’t he?”
    “He has his illusions,” Lotte said wearily, “like the rest of us.”
    Unne looked at her from rather far away, and was as rapidly whirling away even farther. Either I’ve had too much to drink, thought Lotte, which is unlike me, or else she really is whirling away, which is unlike her, but decided, all the same, not to ask questions. Sometimes it is better not to ask, particularly when you do not want to know.
    “Paul says he’s very nice,” said Unne, obviously wanting to work the name in.
    Lotte sat up and stared at her. “He’s probably just a little overawed by the Ephesians,” she said. “They’re not like the Corinthians, you know. They’ve been around longer, no matter what the archaeologists say.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    “One can’t help feeling sorry for him, in a way,” said Unne, and went off to her own room with a gentle and quite unreal smile.
    “Oh dear, has it come to that?” wondered Lotte, and pondered for a while on the infinite understanding of the truly ignorant. Still, if we are entirely too knowledgeable ourselves, sometimes it helps.
    She turned out the light. The clock by her bed said three.

XX
    CHARLIE was playing badminton, a game he doted on, not only because he found the shuttlecock so pretty, but also because privately he had always considered it a symbolic thing. He gave it a censorial whack.
    Paul, who was making a good show out of being beaten, looked contrite. It was Tuesday morning. Unne had gone to Luxembourg City to look for a hat, perhaps for a cocked hat, and Lotte was doing absolutely nothing.
    In the afternoon they went to see the American entry, a comedy set in Beverly Hills. Lotte enjoyed it. When we tire of the complexities of life, what we long for is the utter simplicity of American sophistication, Hollywood style, where even the vice has a certain tight-fisted innocence, as indeed vice usually does. It is the very good, in this world, who are the wicked and wily.
    Though she was seldom there these days, she still kept on a house in Beverly Hills. For one thing, that gave Miss Campendonck a permanent mailing address. For another, she liked to.
    The audience seemed to enjoy the film. America isn’t the promised land any more, Russia makes much better promises than we do, but we still give a better handout, so though we never win the prize, we do get the laughs. Russia has nothing to offer but modified Marxism and the Bolshoi Ballet, an extinct art form. We, on the other hand, provide Coca-Cola, bourbon, Mahalia Jackson, and tight blue jeans. So though we may lose on the economic front and in outer space, culturally we have the world sewed up. The only thing that could possibly shake our dominance is the revelation that Jelly Roll Morton was in actuality the son of Rosa Luxemburg.
    She forgot sometimes, it meant so little to her to be there and she was so glad to be away from it, how much she liked Beverly Hills. It is not something we willingly confess to strangers, but there is much to be said for the place. It is orderly. It is quiet. And if it is not serene, at least it is sedate. One forgets, so ugly is Los Angeles in every way, how lovely southern California is, and, though constrained now, how ample still. Besides, though she didn’t have one, it was as close to a home as she had ever had. It was at least where she had lived while she discovered she didn’t belong anywhere. And so, in a way, she did belong there. She looked at Beverly Hills, just