Read The Hothouse by the East River for Free Online

the colour photograph in his hand and here, again, he holds the
negative up to the light. Katerina, still at school; Pierre, a first-year student;
Paul himself in his tennis clothes, shorter than his son, smiling in profile;
and Elsa, blonde with the parting of her hair showing dark, trim in her white
shorts. Elsa’s shadow falls brown in the photograph, grey-white in the
negative; it crosses his shadow and the children’s as if to cancel them with
one sharp diagonal line. Elsa had laughed at the photograph when she first saw
it; the children had said nothing about the shadow, they never seemed to notice
anything. Only Pierre had said, ‘The Princess always takes photos out of focus;
what a waste!’
     
    ‘Mother
is no fool,’ says Pierre. ‘Mother is intelligent. More than one can possibly
calculate, she’s intelligent, it gives one a jolt sometimes.’
    The
father feels a sudden panic because it is infinitely easier for a man to leave
a beautiful woman, to walk out and leave her, and be free, than to leave a
woman of intelligence beyond his calculation and her own grasp. ‘No,’ Paul
shouts. ‘She’s crazy. I have to think for her, I have to do her thinking all
the time.’
    ‘All
right, Father. All right.’
    ‘She’s
cunning, that’s all. When she wants to be.’
     
    ‘I went
back to the shoe store today, Poppy,’ Elsa says to the Princess. ‘I bought some
boots,’ Elsa says, ‘fur-lined, that I don’t need, Poppy, because I wanted to
have another look. The other day I bought these shoes I’m wearing — do you like
them? He looks like Kiel, too young. Could he be Kiel’s son, do you think?’
    ‘He’s
Kiel,’ says Poppy. ‘Kiel with a face-lift. When I went to the store I looked
close, my dear, and I saw it was truly Kiel. After all, he was very young when
we knew him during the war; very young. He must have had his face lifted, it
looks quite stretched at the eyes. You go again and look close, Elsa. You look
close. He’s stiff at the waist. I bought a pair of evening shoes to be sent
C.O.D. but naturally I gave a false name and address. I’ve got five pairs of
evening shoes already. What do I want with more? I rarely wear them. Did you
notice how he bends, stiff at the knees, thick at the waist, like a prisoner of
long years. As he has been.’
    ‘I know
he’s Kiel,’ Elsa says. ‘I know it very well. I wish you would be more obliging,
Poppy, and pretend he’s someone else. If Paul could be induced to believe this
man’s somebody else, then he will become somebody else. It’s a matter of
persevering in a pretence. Paul must be persuaded against his judgment and
persevere against it.’
    ‘If you
weren’t an old friend of mine that I know so well I’d think you were sinister,’
states the Princess agreeably, as she takes out her powder compact and looks
closely at her face as if to verify to herself that she has uttered no lie. She
looks back at Elsa again and says, ‘utterly unscrupulous.’ She then pats her
nose and jowls with creamy powder, while the central-heating quivers in the air
and, outside the window, snowflakes begin to fold into clouds descending as
they have done, off and on, for so many weeks.
    Neat,
orderly Delia, who has been the Hazletts’ daily maid for more than six years
comes in, looking as usual, to collect the tea-tray and get the washing-up done
before going home. She rarely speaks except to say good-afternoon and
goodbye-now. She came originally from Puerto Rico with her sister, married a
Puerto Rican night-porter, and now lives in the Bronx, returning to Puerto Rico
every two years at Christmas-time with her husband, their suitcase and their
twin daughters. This being a Thursday, Delia has had her shiny hair done before
coming to work, because Thursday is her husband’s night off.
    ‘Your
hair looks very good, Delia,’ Princess Xavier says as the young woman bends
over the tray and picks it up. Delia then stands up straight, holding the tray
at a