Vieux Carre Read Online Free PDF

turned it off and did you?
    WRITER : Yes, that’s what happened. I think that he was shocked by my reaction.
    NIGHTINGALE : You did
him
or— ?
    WRITER : . . . I told him that I . . . loved . . . him. I’d been drinking.
    NIGHTINGALE : Love can happen like that. For one night only.
    WRITER : He said, he laughed and said, “Forget it. I’m flying out tomorrow for training base.”
    NIGHTINGALE : He said to you, “Forget it,” but you didn’t forget it.
    WRITER : No . . . I don’t even have his address and I’ve forgotten his name . . .
    NIGHTINGALE : Still, I think you loved him.
    WRITER : . . . Yes. I . . . I’d like to see some of your serious paintings sometime.
    NIGHTINGALE : Yeah. You will. Soon. When I get them canvases shipped down from Baton Rouge next week. But meanwhile . . . [
His hand is sliding down the sheet
.] How about this?
    WRITER [
with gathering panic
]: . . . I think I’d better get some sleep now. I didn’t mean to tell you all that. Goodnight, I’m going to sleep.
    NIGHTINGALE [
urgently
]: This would help you.
    WRITER : I need to sleep nights— to work.
    NIGHTINGALE : You are alone in the world, and I am, too. Listen. Rain!
    [
They are silent. The sound of rain is heard on the roof
.]
    Look. I’ll give you two things for sleep. First, this. [
He draws back the sheet. The light dims
.] And then one of these pills I call my sandman special.
    WRITER : I don’t . . .
    NIGHTINGALE : Shh, walls have ears! Lie back and imagine the paratrooper.
    [
The dim light goes completely out. A passage of blues piano is heard. It is an hour later. There is a spotlight on the writer as narrator, smoking at the foot of the cot, the sheet drawn about him like a toga
.]
    WRITER : When I was alone in the room, the visitor having retreated beyond the plywood partition between his cubicle and mine, which was chalk white that turned ash-gray at night, not just he but everything visible was gone except for the lighter gray of the alcove with its window over Toulouse Street. An apparition came to me with the hypnotic effect of the painter’s sandman special. It was in the form of an elderly female saint, of course. She materialized soundlessly. Her eyes fixed on me with a gentle questioning look which I came to remember as having belonged to my grandmother during her sieges of illness, when I used to go to her room and sit by her bed and want, so much, to say something or to put my hand over hers, but could do neither, knowing that if I did, I’d betray my feelings with tears that would trouble her more than her illness . . . Now it was she who stood next to my bed for a while. And as I drifted toward sleep, I wondered if she’d witnessed the encounter between the painter and me and what her attitude was toward such— perversions? Of longing?
    [
The sound of stifled coughing is heard across the plywood partition
.]
    Nothing about her gave me any sign. The weightless hands clasping each other so loosely, the cool and believing gray eyes in the faint pearly face were as immobile as statuary. I felt that she neither blamed nor approved the encounter. No. Wait. She . . . seemed to lift one hand very, very slightly before my eyes closed with sleep. An almost invisible gesture of . . . forgiveness? . . . through understanding? . . . before she dissolved into sleep. . .

SCENE THREE
    Tye is in a seminarcotized state on the bed in Jane’s room. Jane is in the hall burdened with paper sacks of groceries; the writer appears behind her
.
    JANE [
brightly
]: Good morning.
    WRITER [
shyly
]: Oh, good morning.
    JANE : Such a difficult operation, opening a purse with one hand.
    WRITER : Let me hold the sacks for you.
    JANE : Oh, thanks; now then, come in, put the sacks on one of those chairs. Over the weekend we run out of everything. Ice isn’t delivered on