The Razor's Edge

'What has he been doing with himself?'

'I don't' really know. I don't think anything very much. I suppose he's been having a good time.'

'And where is he living?'

'I don't know that either.'

'He seems very reticent, doesn't he?'

Isabel lit a cigarette and, as she blew a cloud of smoke from her nostrils, looked coolly at her mother.

'What exactly do you mean by that, Mamma?'

'Your uncle Elliott thinks he has an apartment and is living there with a woman.'

Isabel burst out laughing.

'You don't believe that, do you?'

'No. I honestly don't.'

Mrs Bradley looked reflectively at her nails.

'Don't you ever talk to him about Chicago?'

'Yes, a lot.'

'Hasn't he given any sort of indication that he intends to come back?'

'I can't say he has.'

'He will have been gone two years next October.'

'I know.'

'Well, it's your business, dear, and you must do what you think right. But things don't get any easier by putting them off.' She glanced at her daughter, but Isabel would not meet her eyes. Mrs Bradley gave her an affectionate smile. 'If you don't want to be late for lunch you'd better go and have your bath.'

'I'm lunching with Larry. We're going to some place in the Latin Quarter.'

'Enjoy yourself.'

An hour later Larry came to fetch her. They took a cab to the Pont St Michel and sauntered up the crowded boulevard till they came to a cafe they liked the look of. They sat down on the terrace and ordered a couple of Dubo

When they had finished lunch he suggested that they should take a stroll through the Luxembourg.

'No, I don't want to go and look at pictures.'

'All right then, let's go and sit in the gardens.'

'No, I don't want to do that either. I want to go and see where you live.'

'There's nothing to see. I live in a scrubby little room in a hotel.'

'Uncle Elliott says you've got an apartment and are living in sin with an artist's model.'

'Come on then and see for yourself,' he laughed. 'It's only a step from here. We can walk.'

He took her through narrow, tortuous streets, dingy notwithstanding the streak of blue sky that showed between the high houses, and after a while stopped at a small hotel with a pretentious facade.

'Here we are.'

Isabel followed him into a narrow hall, on one side of which was a desk and behind it a man in shirt-sleeves, with a waistcoat in thin black and yellow stripes and a dirty apron, reading a paper. Larry asked for his key, and the man handed it to him from the rack immediately behind him. He gave Isabel an inquisitive glance that turned into a knowing smirk. It was clear that he thought she was going to Larry's room for no honest purpose.

They climbed up two flights of stairs, on which was a threadbare red carpet, and Larry unlocked his door. Isabel entered a smallish room with two windows. They looked out on the grey apartment house opposite, on the ground floor of which was a stationer's shop. There was a single bed in the room, with a night table beside it, a heavy wardrobe with a large mirror, an upholstered but straight-backed armchair, and a table between the windows on which were a typewriter, papers, and a number of books. The chimney-piece was piled with paper-bound volumes.

'You sit in the armchair. It's not very comfortable, but it's the best I can offer.'

He drew up another chair and sat down.

'Is this where you live?' asked Isabel.

He chuckled at the look on her face.

'It is. I've been here ever since I came to Paris.'

'But why?'

'It's convenient. It's near the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Sorbo

'It's awfully sordid.'

'Oh no, it's all right. It's all I want.'

'But what sort of people live here?'

'Oh, I don't know. Up in the attics a few students. Two or three old bachelors in government offices and a retired actress at the Odeon; the only other room with a bath is occupied by a kept woman whose gentleman friend comes to see her every other Thursday; I suppose a few transients. It's a very quiet and respectable place.'

Isabel was a trifle disconcerted and because she knew Larry noticed it and was amused she was half inclined to take offence.

'What's that great big book on the table?' she asked.

'That? Oh, that's my Greek dictionary.'

'Your what?' she cried.

'It's all right. It won't bite you.'

'Are you learning Greek?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'I thought I'd like to.'

He was looking at her with a smile in his eyes and she smiled back at him.

'Don't you think you might tell me what you've been up to all the time you've been in Paris?'

'I've been reading a good deal. Eight or ten hours a day. I've attended lectures at the Sorbo

'And what is that going to lead to?'

'The acquisition of knowledge,' he smiled.

'It doesn't sound very practical.'

'Perhaps it isn't and on the other hand perhaps it is. But it's enormous fun. You can't imagine what a thrill it is to read the Odyssey in the original. It makes you feel as if you had only to get on tiptoe and stretch out your hands to touch the stars.'

He got up from his chair, as though impelled by an excitement that seized him, and walked up and down the small room.

'I've been reading Spinoza the last month or two. I don't suppose I understand very much of it yet, but it fills me with exultation. It's like landing from your plane on a great plateau in the mountains. Solitude, and an air so pure that it goes to your head like wine and you feel like a million dollars.'

'When are you coming back to Chicago?'

'Chicago? I don't know. I haven't thought of it.'

'You said that if you hadn't got what you wanted after two years you'd give it up as a bad job.'

'I couldn't go back now. I'm on the threshold. I see vast lands of the spirit stretching out before me, beckoning, and I'm eager to travel them.'

'What do you expect to find in them?'

'The answers to my questions.' He gave her a glance that was almost playful, so that except that she knew him so well, she might have thought he was speaking in jest. 'I want to make up my mind whether God is or God is not. I want to find out why evil exists. I want to know whether I have an immortal soul or whether when I die it's the end.'