Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night. Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

TENDER IS THE NIGHT

* * *

Wishing many holidays to Gerald and Sarah.

Book one

I

In a wonderful location on the shores of the French Riviera, approximately halfway between Marseille and the Italian border, stands a proud, pink color hotel building. Palm trees respectfully shield its façade from the heat, in front of which a short strip of beach sparkles dazzlingly in the sun. Subsequently, this hotel became a fashionable summer resort for a select public, but then, ten years ago, it was almost empty after the English guests left in April. Now it is overgrown with clusters of cottages, but at the time in which this story begins, between the hotel for foreigners, the Hotel des Etranges, which belonged to a certain Gosse, and Cannes, located five miles away, in the middle of a continuous pine forest, like water lilies on a pond, one could see here and there are the tops of a dozen withering old villas.

The hotel and the bright bronze prayer mat of the beach formed a single whole. Early in the morning, the distant outline of Cannes, the pink and cream walls of old fortresses and the purple Alps bordering the Italian coast, reflected in the water, trembled on the sea ripples that the swaying of algae sent to the surface of the transparent shallow water. Closer to eight o'clock, a man in a blue bathrobe came down to the beach and, after a long preliminary dry-down, cold water, which were accompanied by quacks and loud sniffles, floundered in the sea for a minute. After he left, the beach and bay remained deserted for about an hour. On the horizon, merchant ships stretched from east to west; bell boys shouted to each other in the hotel courtyard; The dew was drying on the pine trees. Another hour later, the sounds of car horns began to be heard from the winding road that ran along the low massif of the Moorish Mountains, separating the coast from French Provence proper.

A mile from the sea, where the pines gave way to dusty poplars, there was a secluded railway station from where, on a June morning in 1925, a Victoria car was carrying a lady and her daughter to the Gossa Hotel. The mother's face still retained its fading sweetness, its expression at once serene and benevolently attentive. However, everyone would immediately turn their gaze to her daughter: an inexplicable attractiveness lurked in her soft pink palms and cheeks, on which a touching blush played, such as happens to children after an evening swim. The clean forehead gracefully curved to the line of hair, which framed it like a heraldic helmet and scattered waves of light golden curls and curls. Bright, large, clear eyes glistened moistly, and the complexion was natural - a strong young heart regularly drove blood to the surface of the skin. The girl's body froze in a fragile balance at the last stage of childhood, which was almost over - she was almost eighteen - but the dew on the bud had not yet dried.

When below, below them, a thin sultry line of the horizon appeared, connecting the sky and the sea, the mother said:

“Something tells me we won’t like it here.”

“In any case, I want to go home,” the girl answered.

Mother and daughter were talking carefree, but it was obvious that they did not know where to go next, and this was tormenting them, since they still did not want to go anywhere. They craved excitement, not because they needed a boost to frayed nerves, but rather like prize-winning schoolchildren who were sure they deserved a fun vacation.

“We’ll live here for three days, and then go home.” I'll book tickets for the ship right now.

A girl was talking to the administrator at the hotel; her French was replete with idiomatic phrases, but it was too smooth, like any well-learned language. When they settled down on the ground floor, in a room with tall French windows through which streams of light poured in, she opened one of them and, going down the steps, stepped onto the stone veranda that surrounded the entire building. She had the gait of a ballerina; she did not transfer the weight of her body from one hip to the other, but seemed to carry it on her lower back. The hot light instantly squeezed her shadow, and the girl backed away - it was painful for her eyes to look at. Ahead, fifty yards away, the Mediterranean Sea, moment by moment, yielded its blue to the cruel luminary; under the balustrade of the driveway, a faded Buick was roasting in the sun.

In fact, along the entire coastline, only this beach was enlivened by human presence. Three British nannies wove outdated patterns from Victorian England - the forties, the sixties and the eighties - into the sweaters and socks they knitted to the hum of gossip as monotonous as litanies; Closer to the water, about ten to twelve people sat under striped beach umbrellas, the same small flock of children were chasing unafraid fish in the shallow water, several children, their bodies shining with coconut oil rubbed, were sunbathing naked in the sun.

As soon as Rosemary stepped onto the beach, a boy of about twelve rushed past her and, screaming triumphantly, splashed into the sea with a running start. Feeling awkward under the gaze of strangers, she threw off her bathrobe and also entered the water. She swam a few yards, putting her face in the water, but found that the shore was too shallow, and, standing on the bottom, she wandered forward, barely overcoming the resistance of the water with her slender legs. Having gone above the waist, she looked back: standing on the shore, a bald man in a bathing suit, with a bare, hairy chest and a funnel-shaped navel, from which a tuft of hair also protruded, was carefully watching her through a monocle. Meeting Rosemary's gaze, he let go of his monocle, which immediately disappeared into the hairy jungle of his chest, and poured something into a glass from the bottle he was holding in his hand.

Dipping her head, Rosemary swam in a slashing four-stroke crawl towards the raft. The water embraced her, gently sheltering her from the heat, seeped through her hair and penetrated all the folds of her body. Rosemary hugged her, screwed into her, rocked on her to the rhythm of the waves. Having reached the raft, she was quite out of breath, but from the raft a tanned lady with dazzling white teeth looked at her, and, suddenly realizing the inappropriate pallor own body, Rosemary turned over on her back and, surrendering to the current, slid towards the shore. When she came out of the water, the hairy man with the bottle spoke to her:

– I want to warn you: there are sharks behind the reefs. “It was difficult to determine the man’s nationality, but his English clearly had a drawling Oxford accent. “Yesterday in Golfe-Juan they gobbled up two British sailors.

- Oh, righteous God! - Rosemary exclaimed.

“They swim up to the ships for garbage,” the man explained.

The impassivity of his gaze, apparently, should have indicated that he just wanted to warn the new girl; taking two short steps back, he refilled his glass.

Not a little pleasantly embarrassed because this conversation had attracted some attention to her from others, Rosemary looked around for a place where she could land. Each family clearly considered the patch of beach immediately around the umbrella to be their domain; however, the vacationers constantly talked, went to visit each other, and their own atmosphere reigned between them, to intrude into which would be a manifestation of unceremoniousness. Away from the water, where the beach was covered with pebbles and dried algae, a group of pale-skinned people like herself gathered. They hid not under huge beach umbrellas, but under small hand-held umbrellas and, obviously, were not aborigines here. Rosemary found a place between them, spread her robe on the sand and lay down on it.

At first, she only heard the continuous hum of voices, felt when someone’s feet shuffled around her, and a shadow momentarily blocked the sun from her. At some point, the hot, nervous breath of a curious dog smelled on her neck. She felt her skin begin to tingle from the heat, and the quiet sighs of the waves, exhausted at the end, lulled her. But soon she began to discern the meaning of the speeches and learned that a certain North, who was disparagingly called “that guy,” had kidnapped a waiter in a Cannes cafe the previous evening in order to saw him in half. The narrator was a gray-haired lady in a formal dress, who apparently had not had time to change her clothes from the previous evening: she had a tiara on her head, and a withered orchid hung from her shoulder. Feeling a vague dislike for the lady and her entire company, Rosemary turned away from them.

On this side, her closest neighbor was a young woman, lying under a roof of several umbrellas and writing something out of a book open in front of her on the sand. She pulled the straps of her bathing suit off her shoulders, revealing her back, whose copper-brown tan was set off by a string of creamy pearls that shone in the sun. In the woman’s beautiful face one could discern both toughness and plaintiveness. She met Rosemary's eyes, but did not see her. Behind her sat a stately man in a jockey's cap and red striped tights; further - the woman whom Rosemary saw on the raft, this one, unlike the first, responded to her gaze; even further away - a man with an elongated face and golden leonine hair, he was in a blue tights, without a headdress and was having some kind of serious conversation with a young man of definitely Roman origin in a black tights, while both sifted sand through their fingers, choosing pieces from it seaweed Rosemary decided that most of these people were Americans, but something distinguished them from the Americans with whom she had communicated lately.

After observing the company, she guessed that the man in the jockey's cap was giving a little performance; he walked around with a gloomy look with a rake, pretending to rake up pebbles, and meanwhile, maintaining an imperturbably serious expression on his face, he was clearly acting out some kind of burlesque understandable only to initiates. The incongruity was so hilarious that in the end his every phrase caused violent bursts of laughter. Even those, like herself, who were too far away to hear what he was saying began to tune their antennas of attention to him, until the only person on the entire beach not involved in the game was a young woman with a string of pearls around her neck. Probably, the modesty of the owner forced her to bend lower over her notes with each new volley of fun.

Suddenly, as if from the sky above Rosemary's head, the voice of a man with a monocle and a bottle was heard:

- And you are an excellent swimmer.

Rosemary tried to object.

- No, really, just magnificent. My last name is Campion. There is a lady among us who says she saw you last week in Sorrento, knows who you are, and would be very glad to meet you.

Hiding her annoyance, Rosemary looked around and noticed that the untanned group was watching expectantly. She reluctantly stood up and followed Campion.

- Mrs. Abrams... Mrs. McKisco... Mr. McKisco... Mr. Dumphrey...

“And we know who you are,” the lady in evening dress couldn’t resist. – You are Rosemary Hoyt, I recognized you from Sorrento, and the receptionist confirmed; We're all delighted with you and would like to ask why you don't come back to America to star in another great film.

Several people motioned for her to sit next to her. The lady who recognized Rosemary, despite her last name, was not Jewish. She was an example of those “cheerful old ladies” who are well preserved and smoothly flow into the next generation thanks to their impenetrability and excellent digestion.

“We wanted to warn you that on the first day it doesn’t cost anything to get sunburned unnoticed,” the lady continued to chirp cheerfully, “and You must take care of their skin. But they seem to place so much emphasis on damn etiquette here that we didn't know how you would feel about it.

II

“We thought maybe you were part of the conspiracy too,” interjected Mrs. McKisco, a pretty young woman with deceitful eyes and a discouraging intensity. “We don’t know who is involved and who is not.” The man to whom my husband had a special affection turned out to be one of the main characters - in fact, second only to the hero.

- In a conspiracy? – Rosemary asked incomprehensibly. – Is there some kind of conspiracy here?

“My dear, we don’t know,” said Mrs. Abrams, cackling convulsively, as fat women do. – We are not participating in it. We are a gallery.

Mr. Dumphrey, an effeminate young man with tow-like hair, remarked:

“Mother Abrams herself is a total conspiracy.”

Campion shook his monocle at him:

– But, but, Royal, don’t exaggerate.

Rosemary felt out of place and wished her mother were around. She didn't like these people, especially in direct comparison with those at the other end of the beach who interested her. The modest but undeniable talent of communication that her mother possessed had more than once gotten them out of unwanted situations quickly and decisively. But Rosemary became a celebrity only about six months ago, and sometimes the French manners of her early youth and the democratic mores of America that later superimposed on them still came into conflict, leading her into similar circumstances.

To Mr. McKisco, a lean, red-haired, freckled man of about thirty, the topic of “conspiracy” did not seem interesting. Throughout the conversation, he sat staring at the sea, but now, casting a lightning glance at his wife, he turned to Rosemary and asked with some challenge:

– How long have you been here?

- First day.

Apparently wanting to make sure that the topic of conspiracy was closed, he looked around at those present one by one.

– Are you going to spend the whole summer here? – Mrs. McKisco asked innocently. “If so, then you will be able to see how the conspiracy will be resolved.”

- Lord, Violet, leave this topic alone! – her husband exploded. - For God's sake, come up with a new joke!

Mrs. McKisco leaned over to Mrs. Abrams and whispered, so that everyone could hear:

- His nerves are fraying.

“They’re not fooling around,” Mr. McKisco snapped. – I can say that I never get nervous at all.

Everything was seething inside him, and it was visible - his face was filled with a gray-brown color, depriving him of any intelligible expression. Realizing what he looked like, he stood up abruptly and headed towards the water, his wife hurried after him; Taking advantage of the opportunity, Rosemary also went after them.

Taking a deep breath, Mr. McKisco threw himself into the shallow water and, with stiff movements that apparently were supposed to imitate a crawl, began to flail the Mediterranean with his hands. Quickly exhausted, he stood up and looked around, clearly surprised that the shore was still visible.

“I haven’t learned to breathe properly yet,” he said. “I could never understand how it’s done.” “He looked questioningly at Rosemary.

“As far as I know, you should exhale into the water,” she explained. – And on every fourth stroke, turn your head to the side and inhale.

– Breathing is the most difficult thing for me. Did you swim to the raft?

A man with a lion's mane was lying on a raft that was rocking on the waves. At that moment, when Mrs. McKisco swam towards him, the edge of the raft rose and hit her sharply in the shoulder, the man quickly jumped up and pulled her out of the water.

“I was afraid that he would slap you.” – He spoke quietly and somehow timidly; he had the saddest face Rosemary had ever seen: high Indian cheekbones, long upper lip and huge, deep-set eyes the color of tarnished old gold. He spoke the words out of the corner of his mouth, as if he wanted them to reach Mrs. McKisco's ears in a roundabout, delicate way; a minute later, pushing off from the raft, he crashed into the water, and his long body, seemingly motionless, slid towards the shore.

Rosemary and Mrs. McKisco watched him. When the force of inertia was exhausted, he sharply bent in half, his narrow thighs appeared above the water for a moment, and the man immediately disappeared under its surface, leaving behind only a faint trail of foam.

“Swims great,” Rosemary admired.

Mrs. McKisco's response sounded unexpectedly angry:

“But he’s a lousy musician.” - She turned to her husband, who after two unsuccessful attempts he managed to climb onto the raft and, having found his balance, tried to take a relaxed pose to compensate for his clumsiness, but all he achieved was that he could hardly stay on his feet. “I just said that Abe North may be a good swimmer, but he’s a bad musician.”

“Well, yes,” McKisco agreed reluctantly. Apparently, he considered it his prerogative to determine the range of his wife’s opinions and rarely allowed her liberties.

– My idol is Antheil. – Mrs. McKisco turned cockily to Rosemary. - Antheil and Joyce. I suppose you don't hear much about them in Hollywood, but my husband was the first person in America to write a critical article about Ulysses.

“It’s a pity there are no cigarettes,” McKisco said conciliatoryly. “More than anything in the world right now I want to smoke.”

“He has guts, doesn’t he, Albert?”

She suddenly stopped. A woman in pearls was swimming near the shore with her two children; Swimming under one of the kids, Abe North lifted him out of the water on his shoulders, like a volcanic island. The child squealed with fear and pleasure; the woman watched them with affectionate calm, but without a smile.

- Is this his wife? – asked Rosemary.

- No, this is Mrs. Diver. They don't live in a hotel. “Her eyes, like a camera lens, did not leave the woman’s face. After a few moments, she turned sharply to Rosemary.

– Have you been abroad before?

– Yes, I went to school in Paris.

- ABOUT! Then you probably know: if you want to make your stay here enjoyable, you need to make acquaintances among true French people. What are these people doing? “She moved her shoulder towards the shore. - They gather in groups and stick to each other. Well, we, of course, had letters of recommendation, so we met the most famous artists, writers and had a great time there.

- I have no doubt.

– You see, my husband is finishing his first novel.

-What are you saying? – Rosemary responded politely. She was of little interest in the topic of conversation, she only thought about whether her mother managed to fall asleep in such heat.

“It is based on the same principle as Ulysses,” Mrs. McKisco continued. - Only instead of wandering for one day, my husband takes a period of time of a hundred years. He has a frail old French aristocrat undergoing a collision with the century technical progress…

“Violet, for God’s sake, stop telling everyone the plot of my novel,” McKisco pleaded. “I don’t want everyone to know its contents before it comes out.”

Having reached the shore, Rosemary threw her robe over her already sore shoulders and lay down again in the sun. The man in the jockey's cap was now walking around his friends with a bottle and small glasses; During her absence, the company had fun and gathered under a common roof made up of all the umbrellas. Rosemary guessed that they were seeing off someone who was about to leave. Even the children felt that something fun and exciting was happening under this improvised canopy, and began to move there. It was clear that the leader of the company was a man in a jockey's cap.

Noon now ruled over the sea and sky - even the distant contours of Cannes were whitened so much by the sun that they seemed like a mirage, deceptively alluring with freshness and coolness; a red-breasted sailboat, like a robin, headed for the bay, pulling behind it a dark trail from the open, not yet faded sea. It seemed that life had stood still throughout the entire coastal area, except for this motley patch of beach, protected from the sun by umbrellas, rumbling with voices, where something was happening.

Campion walked up and stopped a few steps from Rosemary, she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, but through the crack between her eyelids she could vaguely see the blurred silhouette of two pillar legs. The man tried to climb into the sand-colored cloud looming in front of her, but it floated away into the vast hot sky. Rosemary actually fell asleep.

She woke up covered in sweat and saw that the beach was almost empty, only a man in a jockey's cap remained, folding the last umbrella. When Rosemary, still lying there, blinked sleepily, he came up and said:

“I was going to wake you up before I left.” It is harmful to fry in the sun for so long on the first day.

- Thank you. – Rosemary looked at her crimson legs. - My God!

She laughed cheerfully, inviting him to talk, but Dick Diver was already carrying a folding booth and umbrellas to a nearby car, so she got up and went to rinse off in the sea. Meanwhile, he returned, picked up a rake, a shovel, a sieve and stuffed them into the crevice of the rock, after which he looked around the beach, checking if there was anything else left.

– Don’t know what time it is now? – Rosemary shouted to him from the water.

- About half past one.

Both of them turned their faces to the water for a few seconds and looked at the sea.

“Not a bad time,” said Dick Diver. - Not the worst thing in the day.

He turned his gaze to her, and for a moment she willingly, trustingly plunged into the bright blue of his eyes. Then he shouldered the remaining beach belongings and walked to the car, and Rosemary, coming ashore, picked up her robe from the sand, shook it, put it on and went to the hotel.

III

It was almost two when they entered the restaurant. An intricate dense pattern of shadows and light walked along the empty tables, repeating the swaying of the pine branches outside. Two waiters, who were collecting plates and talking loudly in Italian, fell silent at the sight of them and hastily served what was left of the dinner table d'hôte.

“I fell in love on the beach,” Rosemary announced.

- Who?

– First, to a whole group of people who seemed very nice to me. And then - into one man.

-Have you met him?

- Yes, a little bit. He's very good. Reddish like that. – While telling the story, she ate with excellent appetite. “But he’s married—that’s the eternal story.”

Her mother was her best friend and invested everything she had in her - not an uncommon occurrence in theatrical circles, but unlike other mothers, Mrs. Elsie Spears did not do this out of a desire to reward herself for her own failures in life. Two completely successful marriages, both ending in widowhood, did not leave the slightest taste of bitterness or resentment in her soul, but only strengthened her characteristic cheerful stoicism. One of her husbands was a cavalry officer, the other a military doctor, and both left her some funds, which she sacredly saved for Rosemary. Without spoiling her daughter, she strengthened her spirit, not sparing own works and love, brought up idealism in her, which now turned out to be a benefit for herself: Rosemary looked at the world through her eyes. Thus, while remaining childishly spontaneous, Rosemary was protected by double armor: her mother’s and her own - she had a mature instinct for everything petty, superficial and vulgar. However, now, after her daughter's meteoric film success, Mrs. Spears felt it was time to spiritually wean her; She would not only not be upset, but would be pleased if Rosemary focused her fragile, ardent, demanding idealism on something other than her.

- So you liked it here? – she asked.

“You could probably have a good time here if you met the people I mentioned.” There were also others, but they were unpleasant to me. And they recognized me, it’s amazing - no matter where you go, it turns out everyone has seen “Daddy’s Daughter.”

Mrs. Spears waited out this outburst of narcissism and said matter-of-factly:

“By the way, when are you going to meet Earl Brady?”

“I think we could go see him today if you’re rested.”

- Go alone, I won’t go.

- Well, then we can put it off until tomorrow.

- I want you to go alone. It's not far and you speak excellent French.

- Mom, but can I not want something?

- Okay, go another time, but be sure to see him before we leave.

- Okay, mom.

After dinner they were suddenly overcome by the boredom that often haunts traveling Americans in quiet foreign places. At such moments, no external stimuli are triggered, no voices from outside reach them, they do not catch any echoes of their own thoughts in conversations with others, and, longing for the turbulent life of the empire, it seems to them that life has simply died here.

“Mom, let’s not stay here for more than three days,” Rosemary said when they returned to their room. A light breeze blew outside, which began to blow the heat around, filter it through the foliage of the trees and send small hot clouds into the room through the cracks in the shutters.

– What about the man you fell in love with on the beach?

- Mommy, dear, I don’t love anyone but you.

Going out into the lobby, Rosemary asked Daddy Goss for the train schedule. A concierge in a khaki uniform, lounging near the counter, stared at her, but then remembered the manners befitting a man of his profession and looked away. Two well-trained waiters boarded the bus with her, who remained respectfully silent all the way to the railway station, which made her feel awkward, she just wanted to say: “Come on, talk, feel free, it won’t bother me at all.”

The first class compartment was stuffy; bright advertising posters railway companies - views of the Roman aqueduct in Arles, the amphitheater in Orange, pictures of winter sports in Chamonix - looked much fresher than the endless, motionless sea outside the window. Unlike American trains, which are completely immersed in their own busy lives and indifferent to people from the outside, less fast-paced and dizzying world, this train was flesh and blood of the surrounding landscape. His breath blew dust off the palm leaves, and the ash mixed with dry manure, fertilizing the soil in the gardens. It was not difficult for Rosemary to imagine herself hanging from the window, picking flowers.

On the square in front of the Cannes train station, a dozen hired carriages were waiting for passengers. Beyond the square, along the Promenade, were casinos, fashionable shops and stately hotels, facing the summer sea with their impassive iron masks. It was almost impossible to believe that there was a “season” here, and Rosemary, no stranger to the demands of fashion, felt a little embarrassed - as if she had shown an unhealthy interest in the dead; It seemed to her that people were perplexed: why she was here during the period of hibernation between the fun of the previous and upcoming winters, while somewhere in the north real life was now in full swing.

When Rosemary came out of the pharmacy with the bottle coconut oil, a lady whom she recognized as Mrs. Diver, with an armful of sofa cushions in her hands, crossed the road in front of her and headed towards a car parked a little further down the street. A long, short-legged dachshund barked in greeting when he saw his owner, and the dozing driver jumped up in fear. The lady got into the car. She had perfect control of herself: the expression of her beautiful face was impenetrable, her bold, keen gaze was directed forward into emptiness. She was wearing a bright red dress, from under which her tanned legs without stockings were visible. Thick dark hair shone golden, like the fur of a chow chow.

Since the return train did not leave until half an hour later, Rosemary went into the Café des Alliers on the Croisette and sat down at one of the tables under the shade of the trees; the orchestra entertained the multinational audience with “Carnival in Nice” and last year’s American hit. She bought Le Tampa and the Saturday Evening Post for her mother and now, unwrapping the latter and sipping lemonade, she delved into reading the memoirs of some Russian princess, whose description of the customs of the nineties, already clouded by the veil of years, seemed to Rosemary more real and close than the headlines today's French newspaper. It was akin to the mood that came over her in the hotel - to her, not taught to independently identify the essence of events, accustomed to seeing around her in America grotesqueness, devoid of nuances, clearly marked with the sign of either comedy or tragedy, French life began to seem empty and musty. The feeling was intensified by the melancholy music, reminiscent of the melancholic melodies to which acrobats perform in variety shows. She happily returned to Goss's hotel.

Because of the burn on her shoulders, she was unable to swim for the next day, so she and her mother - after a lot of bargaining, since Rosemary had learned to count money in France - hired a car and drove along the Riviera, which is a delta of many rivers. The driver, who resembled a Russian boyar from the era of Ivan the Terrible, volunteered to be their guide, and the brilliant names - Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo - sparkled again through the veil of torpor, whispering legends about kings of ancient times who came here to feast or die, about rajahs who threw under the feet of English ballerinas, the gems of Buddha's eyes, of the Russian princes who cherished here memories of the lost Baltic past with its abundance of caviar. The Russian spirit was felt more clearly than others on the coast - Russian bookstores and grocery stores were everywhere, although now closed. Then, ten years ago, when the season ended in April, the doors Orthodox churches they were locked up, and the sweet champagne, which the Russians loved so much, was put away in the cellars until their return. "We'll be back to next year“, they said, saying goodbye, but these were unrealistic promises: they never came again.

It was pleasant to drive back to the hotel at sunset over the sea, mysteriously colored in the colors of agates and carnelians memorable from childhood - milky green, like milk in a green bottle, bluish, like water after washing, wine red. It was nice to see people eating in front of the house, and to hear the loud sounds of a mechanical piano coming from behind the vine-covered hedges of the village taverns. When, turning off the Corniche d’Or, they drove along the road leading to Gossa’s hotel, past the darkening tree trellises in the surrounding vegetable gardens, the moon had already risen over the ruins of an ancient aqueduct...

Somewhere in the mountains behind the hotel there was a party going on with dancing, ghostly moonlight poured through the mosquito net, Rosemary listened to music and thought that somewhere nearby there was probably fun going on too - she remembered a nice beach group. Perhaps she will meet them again in the morning, but it is quite obvious that they have their own closed circle, and the part of the beach where they sit with their umbrellas, bamboo rugs, dogs and children will seem to be surrounded by a fence. But in any case, she firmly decided: she would not spend the remaining two mornings with that other company.

Francis Scott Kay Fitzgerald

The night is tender

Translation by E. Kalashnikova

Book one.

In one pleasant corner of the French Riviera, halfway from Marseille to the Italian border, stands a large pink hotel. Palm trees obligingly shade its facade, bursting with heat, in front of which lies a strip of dazzlingly bright beach. In recent years, many socialites and other celebrities have chosen this place as a summer resort; but about ten years ago life here almost came to a standstill from April, when the permanent English clientele migrated north. Now there are many modern buildings crowded around Gosse’s Hotel des Etrangers, but at the beginning of our story only a dozen old villas stood white like withered water lilies in the bushes of pine trees that stretch for five miles, all the way to Cannes.

The hotel and the ocher prayer mat of the beach in front of it were one. Early in the morning, the rising sun threw into the sea the distant streets of Cannes, the pinkish and creamy walls of ancient fortifications, the purple peaks of the Alps, beyond which was Italy, and all this lay free, crushing and swaying when ripples appeared from the swaying of the seaweed near the shallows. At eight o'clock a man in a blue bathrobe appeared on the beach; Having taken off his robe, he took a long time to gather his courage, groaned, groaned, wetted certain parts of his person with water that had not yet warmed up, and finally decided to take a plunge for exactly a minute. After he left, the beach remained empty for about an hour. A merchant ship crawled along the horizon to the west; dishwashers shouted to each other in the hotel courtyard; The dew was drying on the trees. Another hour, and the air was filled with car horns from the highway that wound through the low Moorish mountains that separate the coast from Provence, from real France.

A mile north, where the pines give way to dusty poplars, there is a railroad stop, and from this stop, one June morning in 1925, a small open car was taking two women, a mother and daughter, to the Goss hotel. The mother's face was still beautiful with that faded beauty that was about to disappear under a network of crimson veins; the look was calm, but at the same time lively and attentive. However, everyone would hasten to turn their eyes to her daughter, bewitched by the pinkness of her palms, her cheeks, as if illuminated from within, as happens to a child flushed after an evening swim.

The sloping forehead gently curved upward, and the hair that framed it suddenly scattered in waves, curls, and curls of an ash-golden hue.

The eyes were large, bright, clear, they shone moistly, the blush was natural - it was just under the skin that the blood was pulsating, pumped up by the blows of the young, strong heart. She was all trembling, it seemed, on the last edge of childhood: almost eighteen - already almost blossoming, but still in the morning dew.

When the sea below turned blue, merging with the sky into one hot strip, the mother said:

“For some reason I don’t think we’ll like it here.”

“I think it’s generally time to go home,” the daughter responded.

They spoke without irritation, but it was felt that they were not particularly drawn to anywhere and they were languishing because of this - especially since they still didn’t want to go anywhere. They were prompted to seek entertainment not by the need to spur tired nerves, but by the greed of schoolchildren who, having successfully completed the year, believe that they deserve a fun vacation.

“We’ll stay for three days and then go home.” I will immediately order a cabin by telegraph.

Negotiations for a hotel room were led by the daughter; She spoke French fluently, but there was something memorized in the very perfection of her speech.

When they settled in the large, bright rooms on the ground floor, the girl walked up to the glass door through which the sun was shining, and, crossing the threshold, found herself on the stone veranda that surrounded the building. She had the posture of a ballerina; she carried her body lightly and straight, with each step not sagging down, but as if stretching upward. Her shadow, very short under the sheer rays, lay at her feet; She backed away for a moment - the hot light hurt her eyes. Fifty yards away the Mediterranean Sea splashed, gradually giving up its blue to the merciless sun; right next to the balustrade, a faded Buick was baking in the driveway.

Everything around seemed to freeze, only busy life went on on the beach. Three English nannies, deep in gossip, monotonous as lamentations, knitted socks and sweaters in a Victorian pattern, fashionable in the forties, sixties, and eighties; Closer to the water, about a dozen men and women sat under large umbrellas, and a dozen of their offspring were chasing schools of unafraid fish in the shallow water or lying on the sand, exposing their naked bodies, glossy with coconut oil, to the sun.

Rosemary had barely reached the beach when a boy of about twelve rushed past her and crashed into the water with a gleeful whoop. Under the crossfire of searching glances, she shed her robe and followed suit. After swimming a few yards, she felt herself touching the bottom, stood up and walked, pushing her hips against the resistance of the water. Having reached the place where she was shoulder-deep, she looked back; a bald man in shorts and with a monocle, sticking out his hairy chest and retracting his navel, which was cheekily peeking out of his shorts, looked attentively at her from the shore. Having met her return gaze, the man dropped his monocle, which immediately disappeared into the curly thickets on his chest, and poured himself a glass of something from a flask.

Rosemary lowered her face into the water and swam at a fast crawl towards the raft. The water grabbed her, lovingly hid her from the heat, seeping into her hair, getting into all the folds of her body. Rosemary basked in it, floundered, spinning in place. Finally, out of breath from this fuss, she reached the raft, but some darkly tanned woman with very white teeth met her with a curious look, and Rosemary, suddenly aware of her own whitish nakedness, turned over on her back, and the waves carried her to the shore. As soon as she came out of the water, a hairy man with a flask immediately spoke to her.

“It was difficult to determine his nationality, but he spoke English, with a slight drawl in the Oxford manner. “Just yesterday they devoured two sailors from the flotilla that is stationed in Golfe-Juan.”

1925 Rosemary Hoyt, a young but already famous Hollywood actress after her success in the film “Daddy’s Daughter,” comes to the Cote d’Azur with her mother. Summer is not the season, only one of the many hotels is open. On a deserted beach there are two groups of Americans: “white-skinned” and “dark-skinned,” as Rosemary called them to herself. The girl is much prettier than the “dark-skinned” ones - tanned, beautiful, relaxed, they are at the same time impeccably tactful; she willingly accepts the invitation to join them and immediately falls a little childishly in love with Dick Diver, the soul of this company. Dick and his wife Nicole are local residents and have a house in the village of Tarm; Abe and Mary North and Tommy Barban are their guests. Rosemary is fascinated by the ability of these people to live cheerfully and beautifully - they constantly arrange fun and pranks; Dick Diver emanates a kind, powerful force that forces people to obey him with unreasoning adoration... Dick is irresistibly charming, he wins hearts with extraordinary attentiveness, captivating courtesy of treatment, and so directly and easily that victory is won before the conquered have time to understand anything . Seventeen-year-old Rosemary sobs on her mother’s breast in the evening: I’m in love with him, and he has such a wonderful wife! However, Rosemary is in love with Nicole too - with the whole company: she has never met such people before. And when the Divers invite her to go with them to Paris to see off the Norths - Abe (he is a composer) returns to America, and Mary heads to Munich to study singing - she readily agrees.

In Paris, during one of the dizzying escalades, Rosemary says to herself: “Well, here I am, wasting my life.” While shopping with Nicole, she becomes aware of how she spends money very rich woman. Rosemary falls even more in love with Dick, and he barely has the strength to maintain the image of an adult, twice his age, serious man - he is by no means indifferent to the charms of this “girl in bloom”; Half-child, Rosemary does not understand what kind of avalanche she has caused. Meanwhile, Abe North goes on a drinking binge and, instead of leaving for America, in one of the bars he provokes a conflict between American and Parisian blacks among themselves and with the police; Dick gets to sort out this conflict; the showdown ends with the corpse of a black man in Rosemary's room. Dick arranged it so that the reputation of “Daddy’s Girl” remained untarnished - the case was hushed up, there were no reporters, but the Divers left Paris in a hurry. When Rosemary looks into the door of their room, she hears an inhuman howl and sees Nicole's face distorted by madness: she is staring at the blanket smeared with blood. It was then that she realized what Mrs. McKisco had not had time to tell. And Dick, returning with Nicole to the Cote d'Azur, for the first time in six years of marriage feels that for him this is a path from somewhere, and not somewhere.

In the spring of 1917, Doctor of Medicine Richard Diver, having been demobilized, comes to Zurich to complete his education and receive an academic degree. The war passed him by - even then he was too valuable to be used as cannon fodder; On a scholarship from the State of Connecticut, he studied at Oxford, completed a course in America and interned in Vienna with the great Freud himself. In Zurich, he is working on the book “Psychology for a Psychiatrist” and during sleepless nights he dreams of being kind, being sensitive, being brave and smart - and also being loved, if this does not interfere. At twenty-six, he still retained many youthful illusions - the illusion of eternal strength, and eternal health, and the predominance of good principles in a person - however, these were the illusions of an entire people.

Near Zurich, in the psychiatric hospital of Dr. Domler, his friend and colleague Franz Gregorovius works. For three years now, the daughter of an American millionaire, Nicole Warren, has been in this hospital; she lost her mind, becoming her own father's mistress at the age of sixteen. Her treatment program included correspondence with Diver. In three years, Nicole's health has improved so much that she is about to be discharged. Having met her correspondent, Nicole falls in love with him. Dick is in a difficult position: on the one hand, he knows that this feeling was partly provoked by medicinal purposes; on the other hand, he, who “assembled her personality from pieces” like no one else, understands that if this feeling is taken away from her, then there will be emptiness in her soul. And besides, Nicole is very beautiful, and he is not only a doctor, but also a man. Contrary to reason and the advice of Franz and Domler, Dick marries Nicole. He is aware that relapses of the disease are inevitable - he is ready for this. He sees a much bigger problem in Nicole’s wealth - after all, he is not marrying her money (as Nicole’s sister Baby thinks), but rather in spite of it - but this does not stop him either. They love each other, and, despite everything, they are happy.

Fearing for Nicole's health, Dick pretends to be a convinced homebody - for six years of marriage they almost never parted. During a protracted relapse that occurred after the birth of their second child, daughter Topsy, Dick learned to separate Nicole the sick from Nicole the healthy and, accordingly, during such periods feel only like a doctor, leaving aside the fact that he is also a husband.

Before his eyes and with his hands, the personality of “Nicole is healthy” was formed and turned out to be very bright and strong, so much so that he is increasingly irritated by her attacks, from which she does not give herself the trouble to restrain herself, being already quite capable. He’s not the only one who thinks Nicole is using her illness to maintain power over those around her.

Dick is trying with all his might to maintain some financial independence, but this is becoming more and more difficult for him: it is not easy to resist the flow of things and money that floods him - Nicole also sees this as a lever of her power. They are being driven further and further away from the simple conditions on which their union was once concluded... The duality of Dick's position - husband and doctor - destroys his personality: he cannot always distinguish necessary for the doctor distance in relation to the patient from a chill in the heart in relation to his wife, with whom he is united by flesh and blood...

Rosemary's appearance made him realize all this. Nevertheless, outwardly the life of the Divers does not change.

Christmas 1926 Divers meet in the Swiss Alps; Franz Gregorovius visits them. He invites Dick to jointly buy a clinic so that Dick, the author of many recognized works on psychiatry, would spend several months a year there, which would give him material for new books, and he would take over the clinical work. And of course, “why can a European turn to an American if not for money?” start-up capital is needed to buy a clinic. Dick agrees, allowing himself to be convinced by Baby, who mainly manages the Warrens’ money and considers this enterprise profitable, that staying at the clinic in a new capacity will benefit Nicole’s health. “There I wouldn’t have to worry about her at all,” says Baby.

This didn't happen. A year and a half of monotonous, measured life on Lake Zug, where there is nowhere to escape from each other, provokes a severe relapse: having staged a scene of causeless jealousy, Nicole, with an insane laugh, almost derails the car in which not only she and Dick were sitting, but also the children. Unable to live from attack to attack any longer, Dick, entrusting Nicole to the care of Franz and the nurse, leaves to take a break from her, from himself... supposedly to Berlin for a congress of psychiatrists. There he receives a telegram about his father's death and goes to America for the funeral. On the way back, Dick stops by in Rome with the secret thought of seeing Rosemary, who is filming her next film there. Their meeting took place; what once began in Paris has found its completion, but Rosemary’s love cannot save him - he no longer has the strength for a new love. “I'm like the Black Death. Now I only bring misfortune to people,” Dick says bitterly.

After parting with Rosemary, he gets monstrously drunk; He is rescued from the police station, terribly beaten, by Baby, who ends up in Rome - she is almost pleased that Dick is no longer blameless towards their family.

Dick drinks more and more, and more and more often his charm, ability to understand everything and forgive everything betrays him. He was almost not affected by the readiness with which Franz accepted his decision to quit the case and leave the clinic - Franz himself already wanted to offer him this, because the reputation of the clinic was not benefited by the constant smell of alcohol emanating from Dr. Diver.

What is new for Nicole is that now she cannot shift her problems onto him; she has to learn to take responsibility for herself. And when this happened, Dick disgusted her, like a living reminder of the years of darkness. They become strangers to each other.

The divers return to Tarm, where they meet Tommy Barban - he fought in several wars, changed; and the new Nicole looks at him with new eyes, knowing that he has always loved her. Rosemary also finds herself on the Cote d'Azur. Influenced by memories of his first meeting with her five years ago, Dick tries to organize something similar to past escapades, and Nicole, with cruel clarity, enhanced by jealousy, sees how he has aged and changed. Everything around has also changed - this place has become a fashionable resort, the beach, which Dick once cleared with a rake every morning, is filled with people like the “pale-faces” of that time, Mary North (now Countess Minghetti) does not want to recognize the Divers... Dick leaves this beach as if deposed a king who lost his kingdom.

Nicole, celebrating her final recovery, becomes Tommy Barban's mistress and then marries him, and Dick returns to America. He practices in small towns, never staying anywhere for long, and letters from him come less and less often.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

The night is tender

Book one

A mile north, where the pines give way to dusty poplars, there is a railroad stop, and from this stop, one June morning in 1925, a small open car was carrying two women, a mother and daughter, to the Goss Hotel. The mother's face was still beautiful with that faded beauty that was about to disappear under a network of crimson veins; the look was calm, but at the same time lively and attentive. However, everyone would hasten to turn their eyes to her daughter, bewitched by the pinkness of her palms, her cheeks, as if illuminated from within, as happens to a child flushed after an evening swim.

The sloping forehead gently curved upward, and the hair that framed it suddenly scattered in waves, curls, and curls of an ash-golden hue.

The eyes were large, bright, clear, shone moistly, the blush was natural - it was the blood pulsating just under the skin, pumped by the beats of a young, strong heart. She was all trembling, it seemed, on the last edge of childhood: almost eighteen - already almost blossoming, but still in the morning dew.

When the sea below turned blue, merging with the sky into one hot strip, the mother said:

Somehow I think we won't like it here.

“In my opinion, it’s generally time to go home,” the daughter responded.

We'll stay for three days and then go home. I will immediately order a cabin by telegraph.

Negotiations for a hotel room were led by the daughter; She spoke French fluently, but there was something memorized in the very perfection of her speech.

Keep in mind that you cannot swim further than the raft - there may be sharks there. - His nationality was difficult to determine, but he spoke English, slightly drawing out his words in the Oxford manner. - Just yesterday they devoured two sailors from the flotilla that is stationed in Golfe-Juan.

My God! - Rosemary exclaimed.

They hunt for scum, they know that there is always something to profit from around the flotilla.

I liked The Great Gatsby much more. Here I finally saw the spirit of the era, and the work with characters, and clear motivations of the characters, and timeless relevance, tied not so much to the collapse of a single American dream, but to the eternal problems of human relations. Indeed, eras of stability are replaced by periods of tremendous upheaval, sweeping away established class patterns, whimsically shuffling the balance of poverty and wealth. The polished hereditary aristocracy is being replaced by enterprising nouveau riche businessmen, American dreamers looking at life through rose-colored glasses - down-to-earth and practical yuppies. Although slowly, but still faster than the movement of tectonic plates, the attitude is also changing ordinary people to wealth, and the attitude of the celestials possessing this wealth. In this sense, “Gatsby” is doomed from the very beginning to gradually turn into a shop window picture, which (oh, how one would like to believe) will one day become an amusing curiosity from the obsolete era of the Almighty Dollar. But there are also things in the world that are beyond the control of virtually any metamorphosis of public consciousness. Love and falling in love, sacrifice and selfishness, a crisis of self-determination and the search for one’s place in life are invariably relevant as long as people remain people. That is why “Night” seems to me much more significant and deeper than “Gatsby,” which for some reason is considered the central thing in Fitzgerald’s work.

But here, if you think about it, the author goes much further. Unrequited love Fitzgerald, who has matured and experienced a lot, contrasts Jay with the feelings of Dick and Nicole, who for many years seemed from the outside to be an ideal couple from a magazine picture. What is better and more correct: Gatsby’s stillborn love or the decrepit and faded relationship of the heroes of “Night” with age? It's strange, but even despite the much more optimistic ending, Dick's story seems to me a little happier. The diver is initially a much deeper and more complete personality than Gatsby. If Jay is a stranger at his own party, then Dick is the life of the party, a charming charismatic who effortlessly wins over literally everyone. But it is precisely this internal completeness and self-sufficiency that plays a cruel joke on the hero. A chronic extrovert, accustomed to giving without counting and without demanding anything in return, Dick suddenly realizes that all his life he considered casual affairs and non-binding sex to be love. That is why Nicole seems so unusual to him. Not because of beauty, not because of money, which were largely parallel to Dick all his life. A broken, mentally ill girl abandoned by everyone is an ideal trap for a donor to the core. The temptation is too great to put her back together, to become the center of her world, to teach her to laugh again, to give away a piece of her own soul. So the Diver, having successfully gotten rid of one delusion, immediately acquires another, confusing love and pity.

Here it is necessary to give some beautiful analogy, but far from sublime romance, the only things that come to mind are communicating vessels. What is normally called love is a two-way process, and even if one of the partners is more of an acceptor, then even in this case his role is not equivalent to simple consumption. Nicole, in theory, should give meaning to Dick’s existence, become for him the supporting point of the universe. So that Dick, looking into his wife’s eyes beaming with happiness, would not doubt until his death that everything was not in vain. Indeed, none professional success are not worth the happiness of a loved one, because it is yours too, since we are talking about love. And here it turned out that all Dick’s crazy efforts turned out to be an attempt to fill a broken glass with water. And when, at the cost of superhuman efforts, Dick, who has accomplished the impossible, falls without strength, exhausted and empty, the tap is simply turned off. No one will help him, no one will make up for his sacrifices or give anything in return. The new, completely healthy Nicole, unlike her husband, knows perfectly well the difference between pity and love. The diver is exhausted, the former smiling optimist has given way to a drunken loser, embittered at the world, and what has been given cannot be returned. You can't even blame Nicole for using Dick. She is already a completely different person, and it is ridiculous to demand payment from her for old debts. The heroes changed places, and now Dick needs someone who would give him life new meaning and purpose. The only thing is that the Diver was too special, too out of this world. And therefore he is doomed - there is no reason for the same Rosemary to love him, and simple pity will not improve matters.

A sad but very honest story about how even the strongest and most complete personality can waste itself into emptiness. And about the fact, of course, that even a self-sufficient person standing firmly on his own two feet needs love. Just so that someone can help hold on when the familiar world one day collapses.

Rating: 8

The novel consists of three books. In the first book, we are introduced to the main character through the perception of him by a young girl. Girl, aspiring actress, with bright pronounced syndrome"excellent students", tries to get acquainted with real "adult" life and falls in love for the first time. It’s a stretch to call the life of her new friends “adult”. Although the apparent ease of being is attractive and curious. Entertainment, of which there is no trace of acquaintance after a few months, constant travel, all this, together with an absurd duel and two even more absurd murders, gives little idea of reality and post-war life.

The second book tells about the beginning of the main character's relationship with his wife. The girl is seriously ill, and mentally ill, thanks to a very close relative. And then our hero, a doctor, a young military man, a handsome man and the favorite of everyone around, appears on her horizon. The girl falls in love (although it seems more like the whim of a spoiled girl) and this helps her begin to recover. But recovery is far from complete, especially since she belongs to a different circle than our hero, and after a long internal struggle, the hero decides to accept the offer of the heroine and her sister, de jure becoming a husband, de facto a nurse for his wife, whose recovery lasts a very long and uneven time, sometimes it is so difficult that she cannot remember the birth of her second child. The hero’s business is not going well, medical practice too, science is not progressing, the publication of the book is not progressing. The hero, while remaining decent in terms of money, tries to conduct his affairs without affecting his wife’s finances and paying his bills separately.

Generally a strange hero. He falls in love not on his own, but in response to recognition. Moreover, it reacts precisely to recognition. So it was with his wife, so it was with his love for a young actress. The death of his father crippled the hero and he had already lost his mind. In fact, I almost became disabled. But internally it crushed him. But his inability to hold everything in his hands and be responsible for his wife gives her the opportunity to feel completely free. And just a couple of meetings with a long-time admirer can cancel out a marriage that has exhausted itself.

GG remains lonely, restless, and no one needs him.

In general, I realized one thing: it is pointless to fill the gaps in the classics now. But this book would have even been harmful to me in childhood and early youth. She would have contributed to the path I was on and from which I had to turn without thinking. Now it's too late. Meeting parents' expectations is good, but in moderation. You can and should break yourself, but sometimes it is too late to regret what has not come true, because it is already too late. It’s always better to take a risk and not get what you want than to follow the path of least resistance and eventually realize that what could have become your business will never become again. Because age, unfortunately, does not decrease, but quite the opposite.

I also liked a couple of quotes. After them, I went to look at the author’s biography.

After all, what is meant by excessive courtesy - all people, they say, are such sensitive creatures that you can’t even touch them without gloves. What then about respect for a person? It's not an easy thing to call someone a liar or a coward, but if you spend your whole life sparing people's feelings and pandering to people's vanity, then in the end you can lose all concept of what really deserves respect in a person.

The case was almost hopeless - hereditary neurosis, aggravated by improper upbringing. Her father, a completely normal man with a heightened sense of duty, tried in every possible way to protect his unhealthy offspring from everyday worries, and as a result, the children grew up completely incapable of adapting to the surprises with which life is so rich.

Rating: 8

Wonderful.

That same unfortunate lost generation, drowning in luxury, about which we have heard so much. The delightful style and unhurried narration, descriptions of thoughts and heroes - everything in this book is performed at the highest level.

I’ve been reading this story for quite some time, and I can honestly say that I’m a little sorry to part with them: Dick, Nicole, Rosemary. Their characters seem to be the most real, it’s as if I lived among them myself, lived in luxury in expensive hotels, drove luxury cars, had a blast on the French Riviera, danced to the sounds of an orchestra in luxurious gardens at a Divers’ party and traveled around the world in no time. than without denying yourself. A wonderful illusion to which you can surrender, naive, but undoubtedly attractive. Of course, this was only one side of the coin. I felt sorry for many of them, I was nearby and saw strained smiles hiding disappointment in life and those around them; I saw beautiful, young and very unhappy people, how they throw away nothing meaningful phrases, saw feigned amusement, cynicism and hypocrisy in the rash actions that they so often committed. Madness. While still reading The Great Gatsby, I was somewhat amazed at what kind of psychologist Fitzgerald is, all these pitfalls, thoughts, experiences, memories, what sometimes does not allow us to sleep peacefully, all this sooner or later comes out. In the end, the masks are always thrown aside, and this is always very painful.

In a sense, yes, this is a whole epic, no matter how funny it may sound, and it ended.

Simple and unpretentious, just like it started. And I'm not disappointed. It was an enjoyable time.

Rating: 8

Minor spoilers possible!!!

I recently read Hemingway’s autobiography, “The Holiday That’s Always With You,” and when I came across the chapters dedicated to Fitzgerald and his wife, I decided to re-read his work.

I read “Tender is the Night” for the second time. And, like Hemingway, I liked this book more the second time I read it.

"Tender is the Night" is stunning, deep and authentic with psychological point view novel. The author brilliantly managed to write all the characters in the novel. You sympathize with them, empathize with them, sometimes you even hate them. The characters are absolutely alive. There is no template or cardboard stuff. It is immediately clear that the events occurring in the novel are based on his personal experience and the experience of his wife. After all, this book is essentially the autobiography of the wife. I repeat, from a psychological point of view, the characters are truthful.

Well, what about the ending... This is a standard ending.

For me, Tender is the Night is the best thing Fitzgerald wrote. I recommend everyone to read it.

Rating: 10

Dick is a young brilliant doctor who falls in love with his mentally ill patient. Nicole is a girl lost in herself who clings to the object of her love as the only guide in this world. He gives in to her pressure and his need to save and marries her, many years of happiness await them, and then... At what point did everything go wrong? Why do the closest people suddenly wake up as strangers? Is it due to social inequality, money? Or was the only thing keeping them together was Nicole's illness? She, having recovered, no longer wanted to see meaning in only one person, and he, with his need to help, did not need a companion who did not need him like in the air (as the story with Rosemary indirectly shows)?

Brilliantly written, but I didn't get into it. I have the feeling that the author walks along the edge of the characters’ inner world, but never dares to dive there, so we see only external events, and the deep driving forces remain behind the scenes. The coldness of an outside observer.

Brrrrr.. None of the heroes evoked any pity, sympathy, or sympathy. Nothing. But so is the book itself.