F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night [118]
Franz had not noticed these details.
“But what?” Kaethe demanded. “Do you think that sort of thing does the Clinic any good? The liquor I smelt on him tonight, and several other times since he’s been back.”
She slowed her voice to fit the gravity of what she was about to say: “Dick is no longer a serious man.”
Franz rocked his shoulders up the stairs, shaking off her persistence. In their bedroom he turned on her.
“He is most certainly a serious man and a brilliant man. Of all the men who have recently taken their degrees in neuropathology in Zurich, Dick has been regarded as the most brilliant—more brilliant than I could ever be.”
“For shame!”
“It’s the truth—the shame would be not to admit it. I turn to Dick when cases are highly involved. His publications are still standard in their line—go into any medical library and ask. Most students think he’s an Englishman—they don’t believe that such thoroughness could come out of America.” He groaned domestically, taking his pajamas from under the pillow, “I can’t understand why you talk this way, Kaethe—I thought you liked him.”
“For shame!” Kaethe said. “You’re the solid one, you do the work. It’s a case of hare and tortoise—and in my opinion the hare’s race is almost done.”
“Tch! Tch!”
“Very well, then. It’s true.”
With his open hand he pushed down air briskly.
“Stop!”
The upshot was that they had exchanged viewpoints like debaters. Kaethe admitted to herself that she had been too hard on Dick, whom she admired and of whom she stood in awe, who had been so appreciative and understanding of herself. As for Franz, once Kaethe’s idea had had time to sink in, he never after believed that Dick was a serious person. And as time went on he convinced himself that he had never thought so.
II
Dick told Nicole an expurgated version of the catastrophe in Rome— in his version he had gone philanthropically to the rescue of a drunken friend. He could trust Baby Warren to hold her tongue, since he had painted the disastrous effect of the truth upon Nicole. All this, however, was a low hurdle compared to the lingering effect of the episode upon him.
In reaction he took himself for an intensified beating in his work, so that Franz, trying to break with him, could find no basis on which to begin a disagreement. No friendship worth the name was ever destroyed in an hour without some painful flesh being torn—so Franz let himself believe with ever-increasing conviction that Dick travelled intellectually and emotionally at such a rate of speed that the vibrations jarred him—this was a contrast that had previously been considered a virtue in their relation. So, for the shoddiness of needs, are shoes made out of last year’s hide.
Yet it was May before Franz found an opportunity to insert the first wedge. Dick came into his office white and tired one noon and sat down, saying:
“Well, she’s gone.”
“She’s dead?”
“The heart quit.”
Dick sat exhausted in the chair nearest the door. During three nights he had remained with the scabbed anonymous woman-artist he had come to love, formally to portion out the adrenaline, but really to throw as much wan light as he could into the darkness ahead.
Half appreciating his feeling, Franz travelled quickly over an opinion:
“It was neuro-syphilis. All the Wassermans we took won’t tell me differently. The spinal fluid—”
“Never mind,” said Dick. “Oh, God, never mind! If she cared enough about her secret to take it away with her, let it go at that.”
“You better lay off for a day.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to.”
Franz had his wedge; looking up from the telegram that he was writing to the woman’s brother he inquired: “Or do you want to take a little trip?”
“Not now.”
“I don’t mean a vacation. There’s a case in Lausanne. I’ve been on the