A BAROQUE AFFAIR
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Later, when he made some general statements about chess, bringing
in Middleton and Massinger and the Persians, making Lucy's or any–
one's reactions into a large cultural fact, she was still guarded and
sullen, she couldn't think of herself in this dispassionate way. It was
the same whenever he referred to her as a member of the middle
class-she always considered it an insult. Especially after he told
her his father was an Irish policeman!
One night Lucy and Donald Craven sat for hours in a Greek
restaurant because Lucy was afraid to stay at her apartment where
the telephone might uncontrollably ring. Yet later, she was also
afraid to go back there, so they kept having more coffee. Craven
saw that Lucy couldn't keep her mind on what he was saying. Her
eyes darted wildly around the place, and finally she even told him
tentatively that she was afraid "she" would come down, or find them
or something. There was no need to identify the person referred to. In
some cr.azy way (even Lucy thought it was a little crazy), she
thought "she" would find them in the restaurant. Lucy suggested
moving to a table further from the door.
This was another demonstration for Donald Craven. There was
Lucy's unconscious life spread out like an architect's drawing; there,
he saw clearly, was Mrs. Doob at the entrance to Lucy's mind as
well as in the dimmer corridors of it. He saw no other tenants-Mr.
Doob he could not see as counting at all, and Roger Staley or Louis
Meyer could hardly exist for him. Lucy was still very much the
same-that night she had been terribly excited about having oysters,
she'd never eaten them before!
Another night, in Craven's apartment, when Lucy said the room
seemed to her very Italian, Craven assumed she was thinking of the
Italian families and stores, the whole atmosphere of the Carmine
Street
quartiere
where he lived. He could not know that the room
was a picture straight out of Lucy's imagination, the room of an
Italian intellectual, with bare white walls, no color except for the
black bookcases and dull brown rug, and over everything a pale
brownish mist. In the picture Lucy always put someone like Moravia
frowning at a desk. When she tried to tell Craven about her idea,
his
eyes were veiled, and he suspected her of inauthentic improvising.
She had not been to Europe, of course, so she could only agree that
her impressions lacked the grandeur of validity. Craven thought he
