F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
Walking in the garden later when it was quite dark, he thought about her with detachment, loving her for her best self. He remembered once when the grass was damp and she came to him on hurried feet, her thin slippers drenched with dew. She stood upon his shoes nestling close and held up her face, showing it as a book open at a page.
‘Think how you love me,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am to-night.’
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
Tender Is The Night
“Why did you lose control of yourself like that?”
“You know very well why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s just preposterous — let me loose — that’s an insult to my intelligence. Don’t you think I saw that girl look at you — that little dark girl. Oh, this is farcical — a child, not more than fifteen. Don’t you think I saw?”
“Stop here a minute and quiet down.”
They sat at a table, her eyes the profundity of suspicion, her hand moving across her line of sight as if it were obstructed. “I want a drink — I want a brandy.”
“You can’t have a brandy — you can have a bock if you want it.”
“Why can’t I have a brandy?”
“We won’t go into that. Listen to me — this business about a girl is a delusion, do you understand that word?”
“It’s always a delusion when I see what you don’t want me to see.”
He felt a sense of guilt as in one of those nightmares where we are accused of a crime which we recognize as something undeniably experienced, but which upon waking we realize we have not committed.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
For him time stood still and then every few years accelerated in a rush, like the quick re-wind of a film, but for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty.
Even this past year and a half on the Zugersee seemed wasted time for her, the seasons marked only by the workmen on the road turning pink in May, brown in July, black in September, white again in Spring. She had come out of her first illness alive with new hopes, expecting so much, yet deprived of any subsistence except Dick, bringing up children she could only pretend gently to love, guided orphans. The people she liked, rebels mostly, disturbed her and were bad for her — she sought in them the vitality that had made them independent or creative or rugged, sought in vain — for the secrets were buried deep in childhood struggles they had forgotten. They were more interested in Nicole’s exterior harmony and charm, the other face of her illness. She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned.
Many times he tried unsuccessfully to let go his hold on her. They had many fine times together, fine talks between the loves of the white nights, but always when he turned away from her into himself he left her holding Nothing in her hands and staring at it, calling it many names, but knowing it was only the hope that he would come back soon.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
Tender Is The Night
An unfamiliar impatience settled over Dick; suddenly Nicole said: “It seemed too bad to leave Rosemary like that — do you suppose she’ll be all right?”
“Of course. She could take care of herself anywhere — ” Lest he belittle Nicole’s ability to do likewise, he added, “After all, she’s an actress, and even though her mother’s in the background, she has to look out for herself.”
“She’s very attractive.”
“She’s an infant.”
“She’s attractive though.”
They talked aimlessly back and forth, each speaking for the other.
“She’s not as intelligent as I thought,” Dick offered.
“She’s quite smart.”
“Not very, though — there’s a persistent aroma of the nursery.”
“She’s very — very pretty,” Nicole said, in a detached, emphatic way, “and I thought she was very good in the picture.”
“She was well directed. Thinking it over, it wasn’t very individual.”
“I thought it was. I can see how she’d be very attractive to men.”
His heart twisted. To what men? How many men?
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
