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Vaniria Setser

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Jun 28, 2024, 3:33:01 PM6/28/24
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On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half waybetween Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud,rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushedfaade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach.Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionablepeople; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its Englishclientele went north in April. Now, many bungalows cluster near it,but when this story begins only the cupolas of a dozen old villasrotted like water lilies among the massed pines between Gausse'sHtel des trangers and Cannes, five miles away.

The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one. Inthe early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and creamof old fortifications, the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were castacross the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent upby sea-plants through the clear shallows. Before eight a man camedown to the beach in a blue bathrobe and with much preliminaryapplication to his person of the chilly water, and much gruntingand loud breathing, floundered a minute in the sea. When he hadgone, beach and bay were quiet for an hour. Merchantmen crawledwestward on the horizon; bus boys shouted in the hotel court; thedew dried upon the pines. In another hour the horns of motors beganto blow down from the winding road along the low range of theMaures, which separates the littoral from true ProvenalFrance.

Indeed, of all the region only the beach stirred with activity.Three British nannies sat knitting the slow pattern of VictorianEngland, the pattern of the forties, the sixties, and the eighties,into sweaters and socks, to the tune of gossip as formalized asincantation; closer to the sea a dozen persons kept house understriped umbrellas, while their dozen children pursued unintimidatedfish through the shallows or lay naked and glistening with cocoanutoil out in the sun.

As Rosemary came onto the beach a boy of twelve ran past her anddashed into the sea with exultant cries. Feeling the impactivescrutiny of strange faces, she took off her bathrobe and followed.She floated face down for a few yards and finding it shallowstaggered to her feet and plodded forward, dragging slim legs likeweights against the resistance of the water. When it was aboutbreast high, she glanced back toward shore: a bald man in a monocleand a pair of tights, his tufted chest thrown out, his brash navelsucked in, was regarding her attentively. As Rosemary returned thegaze the man dislodged the monocle, which went into hiding amid thefacetious whiskers of his chest, and poured himself a glass ofsomething from a bottle in his hand.

Rosemary laid her face on the water and swam a choppy littlefour-beat crawl out to the raft. The water reached up for her,pulled her down tenderly out of the heat, seeped in her hair andran into the corners of her body. She turned round and round in it,embracing it, wallowing in it. Reaching the raft she was out ofbreath, but a tanned woman with very white teeth looked down ather, and Rosemary, suddenly conscious of the raw whiteness of herown body, turned on her back and drifted toward shore. The hairyman holding the bottle spoke to her as she came out.

Lying so, she first heard their voices and felt their feet skirther body and their shapes pass between the sun and herself. Thebreath of an inquisitive dog blew warm and nervous on her neck; shecould feel her skin broiling a little in the heat and hear thesmall exhausted wa-waa of the expiring waves. Presently herear distinguished individual voices and she became aware that someone referred to scornfully as "that North guy" had kidnapped awaiter from a caf in Cannes last night in order to saw himin two. The sponsor of the story was a white-haired woman in fullevening dress, obviously a relic of the previous evening, for atiara still clung to her head and a discouraged orchid expired fromher shoulder. Rosemary, forming a vague antipathy to her and hercompanions, turned away.

Nearest her, on the other side, a young woman lay under a roofof umbrellas making out a list of things from a book open on thesand. Her bathing suit was pulled off her shoulders and her back, aruddy, orange brown, set off by a string of creamy pearls, shone inthe sun. Her face was hard and lovely and pitiful. Her eyes metRosemary's but did not see her. Beyond her was a fine man in ajockey cap and red-striped tights; then the woman Rosemary had seenon the raft, and who looked back at her, seeing her; then a manwith a long face and a golden, leonine head, with blue tights andno hat, talking very seriously to an unmistakably Latin young manin black tights, both of them picking at little pieces of seaweedin the sand. She thought they were mostly Americans, but somethingmade them unlike the Americans she had known of late.

After a while she realized that the man in the jockey cap wasgiving a quiet little performance for this group; he moved gravelyabout with a rake, ostensibly removing gravel and meanwhiledeveloping some esoteric burlesque held in suspension by his graveface. Its faintest ramification had become hilarious, untilwhatever he said released a burst of laughter. Even those who, likeherself, were too far away to hear, sent out antenn ofattention until the only person on the beach not caught up in itwas the young woman with the string of pearls. Perhaps from modestyof possession she responded to each salvo of amusement by bendingcloser over her list.

"We know who you are," spoke up the woman in evening dress."You're Rosemary Hoyt and I recognized you in Sorrento and askedthe hotel clerk and we all think you're perfectly marvellous and wewant to know why you're not back in America making anothermarvellous moving picture."

They made a superfluous gesture of moving over for her. Thewoman who had recognized her was not a Jewess, despite her name.She was one of those elderly "good sports" preserved by animperviousness to experience and a good digestion into anothergeneration.

"We wanted to warn you about getting burned the first day," shecontinued cheerily, "because your skin is important, butthere seems to be so darn much formality on this beach that wedidn't know whether you'd mind."

Mr. Dumphry, a tow-headed effeminate young man, remarked: "MamaAbrams is a plot in herself," and Campion shook his monocle at him,saying: "Now, Royal, don't be too ghastly for words." Rosemarylooked at them all uncomfortably, wishing her mother had come downhere with her. She did not like these people, especially in herimmediate comparison of them with those who had interested her atthe other end of the beach. Her mother's modest but compact socialgift got them out of unwelcome situations swiftly and firmly. ButRosemary had been a celebrity for only six months, and sometimesthe French manners of her early adolescence and the democraticmanners of America, these latter superimposed, made a certainconfusion and let her in for just such things.

The man with the leonine head lay stretched out upon the raft,which tipped back and forth with the motion of the water. As Mrs.McKisco reached for it a sudden tilt struck her arm up roughly,whereupon the man started up and pulled her on board.

"I was afraid it hit you." His voice was slow and shy; he hadone of the saddest faces Rosemary had ever seen, the highcheekbones of an Indian, a long upper lip, and enormous deep-setdark golden eyes. He had spoken out of the side of his mouth, as ifhe hoped his words would reach Mrs. McKisco by a circuitous andunobtrusive route; in a minute he had shoved off into the water andhis long body lay motionless toward shore.

Rosemary and Mrs. McKisco watched him. When he had exhausted hismomentum he abruptly bent double, his thin thighs rose above thesurface, and he disappeared totally, leaving scarcely a fleck offoam behind.

"Well, he's a rotten musician." She turned to her husband, whoafter two unsuccessful attempts had managed to climb on the raft,and having attained his balance was trying to make some kind ofcompensatory flourish, achieving only an extra stagger. "I was justsaying that Abe North may be a good swimmer but he's a rottenmusician."

"Antheil's my man." Mrs. McKisco turned challengingly toRosemary, "Anthiel and Joyce. I don't suppose you ever hear muchabout those sort of people in Hollywood, but my husband wrote thefirst criticism of Ulysses that ever appeared in America."

Her voice faded off suddenly. The woman of the pearls had joinedher two children in the water, and now Abe North came up under oneof them like a volcanic island, raising him on his shoulders. Thechild yelled with fear and delight and the woman watched with alovely peace, without a smile.

"Oh! Well then you probably know that if you want to enjoyyourself here the thing is to get to know some real Frenchfamilies. What do these people get out of it?" She pointed her leftshoulder toward shore. "They just stick around with each other inlittle cliques. Of course, we had letters of introduction and metall the best French artists and writers in Paris. That made it verynice."

Campion walked near her, stood a few feet away and Rosemaryclosed her eyes, pretending to be asleep; then she half-opened themand watched two dim, blurred pillars that were legs. The man triedto edge his way into a sand-colored cloud, but the cloud floatedoff into the vast hot sky. Rosemary fell really asleep.

She laughed cheerfully, inviting him to talk, but Dick Diver wasalready carrying a tent and a beach umbrella up to a waiting car,so she went into the water to wash off the sweat. He came back andgathering up a rake, a shovel, and a sieve, stowed them in acrevice of a rock. He glanced up and down the beach to see if hehad left anything.

He looked at her and for a moment she lived in the bright blueworlds of his eyes, eagerly and confidently. Then he shouldered hislast piece of junk and went up to his car, and Rosemary came out ofthe water, shook out her peignoir and walked up to the hotel.

It was almost two when they went into the dining-room. Back andforth over the deserted tables a heavy pattern of beams and shadowsswayed with the motion of the pines outside. Two waiters, pilingplates and talking loud Italian, fell silent when they came in andbrought them a tired version of the table d'hteluncheon.

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