Cast in Doubt Read Online Free PDF Page A

now and then, about such events, as if they were only in the past and did not enter her life here, as I know they do, as I know men enter her life, enter her door, enter her. Have you any siblings? I ask. Yes, she answers, but then states that she doesn’t really like to talk about her family. I’m sorry, I say.
    There’s a boring silence and she looks out the window again. I feel I have done something terribly wrong. Or she has done something terribly wrong. But what could that be? Finally she insists that we should just forget it, or drop it, as she puts it, because it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to think about the past. It’s bad for her. “Bad for me, Horace.” She pronounces my name in two distinct syllables, for emphasis. I love it when she uses my name. From her lips it sounds like an interesting one.
    To mollify me, she tells me that she dropped out of college in her second semester, which is indeed precocious, I remark, but she continues as if I hadn’t said that. Then, in New York, she worked as an artist’s model, posing nude four times a week, three hours each sitting, for students from an art school and also for some private classes. Helen frequented clubs and bars all during that time—Max’s especially. She dyed her hair orange, wore flat white powder on her face, and painted dark red lipstick on her naturally blush pink lips. She acquired a series of musician boyfriends who had apartments; she lived with each for about a month, until it wasn’t cool anymore, as she puts it. But, she states definitively, she’d never do it for money. I am slightly shocked, to hear that she might even consider doing it for money. She’s not romantic, she admits, which I can almost grasp, though it’s difficult to accept from one so young and, in a way, delicate. She is in another league altogether. I think of that—other leagues and other clubs. Twenty thousand leagues under the sea dwell those fascinating and grotesque octopuses. Why do they disgust me so? Has she read Jules Verne? I think not.
    When she and I walk together in town, men watch her move—women too—and I can’t tell if she’s doing something with her surprisingly round bottom or if it’s just the shape of it and her general demeanor. She’s not classically beautiful, but pretty and appealing, I think, and sexy in an awkward, almost androgynous way. She is also knowing, but then that’s an appropriately cool pose. As we get out of the car, having reached the village, which is just a few cottages, she rushes to explain that I don’t have to tell her anything I don’t want to, ever, that that ought to be our rule—no rules but that—our friendship must be different, unique. She says this so earnestly I want to embrace her, but feel that would be more common than unique and not at all hip. I respond pensively and formally, given the gravity of her statements: One should never have to say anything if one doesn’t want to do so. Helen tells me that she knows I want to be a mystery. With her, she asserts, I don’t have to try. I am one. I think quite the same thing about her, but would probably never tell her.
    The sun must be directly overhead. Twelve-thirty or one in the afternoon, and still the women labor in the rocky fields—what is this always called? stubborn earth. Their tanned faces are streaked with sweat and dirt. Kostas, the peasant who fought the Turks, is sitting under the shade of his arbor, the green grapes weighing down the slight structure. I don’t know how old he is but his age has afforded him a respected position in the village, that and his having fought the hated Turks. His BMW motorcycle, a remnant of World War II and the presence of the Germans, is parked next to a small barn where several donkeys bray, annoyed by flies. It is a wonderful, pastoral scene, a scene from the past one thought evanescent. Yet it exists and is untouched, by something. Innocent, isn’t it? Is Helen affected as I am by the beauty