Henry Kuttner - Vintage Season

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VINTAGE SEASON
by Henry Kuttner
THREE PEOPLE came up the walk to the old mansion just at
dawn on a perfect May morning. Oliver Wilson in his pyjamas
watched them from an upper window through a haze of con-
flicting emotions, resentment predominant. He didn't want
them there.
They were foreigners. He knew only that much about
them. They had the curious name of Sancisco, and their first
names, scrawled in loops on the lease, appeared to be Omerie,
Kleph and Klia, though it was impossible as he looked down
upon them to sort them out by signature. He hadn't even been
sure whether they would be men or women, and he had
expected something a little less cosmopolitan.
Oliver's heart sank a little as he watched them follow the
taxi driyer up the walk. He had hoped for less self-assurance
in his UEtwelcome tenants, because he meant to force them
out of the house if he could. It didn't look very promising
from here.
The man went first. He was tail and dark, and he wore his
clothes and carried his body with that peculiar arrogant assur-
antfe that comes from perfect confidence in every phase of
one's being. The two women were laughing as they followed
"mm. Their voices were light and sweet, and their faces were
beautiful, each in its own exotic way, but the first thing Oliver
thought of when he looked at them was. Expensive!
It was not only that patina of perfecton that seemed to
dwell in every line of their incredibly flawless garments. There
are degrees of wealth beyond which wealth itself ceases to
have significance. Oliver had seen before, on rare occasons,
something like this assurance that the earth turning beneath
their well-shod feet turned only to their whim.
It puzzled him a little in this case, because he had the
feeling as the three came up the walk that the beautiful cloth-
ing they wore so confidently was not clothing they were ac-
customed to. There was a curious air of condescension in the
way they moved. Like women in costume. They minced a
little on their delicate high heels, held out an arm to stare at
the cut of a sleeve, twisted now and then inside their garments
as if the clothing sat strangely on them, as if they were ac-
customed to something entirely different.
And there was an elegance about the way the garments fitted
them which even to Oliver looked strikingly unusual. Only an
actress on the screen, who can stop time and the film to adjust
every disarrayed fold so that she looks perpetually perfect,
might appear thus elegantly clad. But let these women move
as they liked, and each fold of their clothing followed
perfectly with the movement and fell perfectly into place
again. One might almost suspect the garments were not cut of
ordinary cloth, or that they were cut according to some un-
known, subtle scheme, with many artful hidden seams placed
by a tailor incredibly skilled at his trade.
They seemed excited. They talked in high, clear, very sweet
voices, looking up at the perfect blue and transparent sky in
which dawn was still frankly pink. They looked at the trees
on the lawn, the leaves translucently green with an under
colour of golden newness, the edges crimped from constric-
tion in the recent bud.
Happily and with excitement in their voices they called to
the man, and when he answered his own voice blended so per-
fectly in cadence with theirs that it sounded like thiee people
singing together. Their voices, like their clothing, seemed to
have an elegance far beyond the ordinary, to be undgl~ con-
trol such as Oliver Wilson had never dreamed of before, this
morning.
The taxi driver brought up the luggage, which was of a
beautiful pale stuff that did not look quite like leather, and
had curves in it so subtle it seemed square until you saw"
how two or three pieces of it fitted together when carried, into
a perfectly balanced block. It was scuffed, as if from much
use. And though there was a great deal of it, the taxi man
did not seem to find his burden heavy. Oliver saw him look
down at it now and then and heft the weight incredulously.
One of the women had very black hair and skin like cream,
and the smoke-blue eyes heavy-lidded with the weight of her
lashes. It was the other woman Oliver's gaze followed as she
came up the walk. Her hair was a clear, pale red, and her
face had a softness that he thought would be like velvet to
touch. She was tanned to a warm amber darker than her hair.
Just as they reached the porch steps the fair woman lifted
her head and looked up. She gazed straight into Oliver's eyes
and he saw that hers were very blue, and just a little
amused, as if she had known he was there all along. Also they .
were frankly admiring.
Feeling a bit dizzy, Oliver hurried back to his room to dress.
"We are here on a vacation," the dark man said, accepting
the keys. "We will not wish to be disturbed, as I made clear
in our correspondence. You have engaged a cook and house-
maid for us, I understand? We will expect you to move your
own belongings out of the house, then, and"
"Wait," Oliver said uncomfortably. "Something's come up.
I" He hesitated, not sure just how to present it. These
were such increasingly odd people. Even their speech was odd.
They spoke so distinctly, not slurring any of the words into
contractions. English seemed as familiar to them as a native
tongue, but they all spoke as trained singers sing, with perfect
breath control and voice placement.
And there was a coldness in the man's voice, as if some
gulf lay between him and Oliver, so deep no feeling of human
contact could bridge it.
"I wonder," Oliver said, "if I could find you better living
quarters somewhere else in town. There's a place across the
street that"
The dark woman said, "Oh, no!" in a lightly horrified
voice, and all three of them laughed. It was cool, distant
laughter that did not include Oliver.
The dark man said, "We chose this house carefully, Mr.
Wilson. We would not be interested in living anywhere else."
Oliver said desperately, "I don't see why. It isn't even a
modern house. I have two others in much better condition.
Even across the street you'd have a fine view of the city.
Here there isn't anything. The other houses cut off the view,
and"
"We engaged rooms here, Mr. Wilson," the man said with
finality. "We expect to use them. Now will you make arrange-
ments to leave as soon as possible."
Oliver said, "No," and looked stubborn. "That isn't in the
lease. You can live here until next month, since you paid
for it, but you can't put me out. I'm staying."
The man opened his mouth to say something. He looked
coldly at Oliver and closed it again. The feeling of aloofness
was chill between them. There was a moment's silence. Then
the man said, "Very well. Be kind enough to stay out of our
way."
It was a little odd that he didn't inquire into Oliver's motives.
Oliver was not yet sure enough of the man to explain. He
couldn't very well say, "Since the lease was signed. I've been
offered three times what the house is worth if I'll sell it before
the end of May." He couldn't say, "I want the money, and
I'm going to use my own nuisance-value to annoy you until
you're willing to move out." After all, there seemed no reason
why they shouldn't. After seeing them, there seemed doubly
no reason, for it was clear they must be accustomed to sur-
roundings infinitely better than this timeworn old house.
It was very strange, the value this house had so suddenly
acquired. There was no reason at all why two groups of semi-
anonymous people should be so eager to possess it for the
month of May.
In silence Oliver showed his tenants upstairs to the three
big bedrooms across the front of the house. He was intensely
conscious of the red-haired woman and the way she watched
him with a sort of obviously covert interest, quite warmly, and
with a curious undertone to her interest that he could not quite
place. It was familiar, but elusive. He thought how pleasant
it would be to talk to her alone, if only to try to capture that
elusive attitude and put a name to it.
Afterwards he went down to the telephone and called
his fiancee.
Sue's voice squeaked a little with excitement over the wire.
"Oliver, so early? Why, it's hardly six yet. Did you tell
them what I said? Are they going to go?"
"Can't tell yet. I doubt it. After all. Sue, I did take their
money, you know."
"Oliver, they've got to go! You've got to do something!"
"I'm trying, Sue. But I don't like it."
"Well, there isn't any reason why they shouldn't stay some-
where else. And we're going to need that money. You'll
just have to think of something, Oliver."
Oliver met his own worried eyes in the mirror above the
telephone and scowled at himself. His straw-coloured hair was
tangled and there was a shining stubble on his pleasant, tanned
face. He was sorry the red-haired woman had first seen him
in his untidy condition. Then his conscience smote him at the
sound of Sue's determined voice and he said:
"I'll try, darling. I'll try. But I did take their money."
They had, in fact, paid a great deal of money, considerably
more than the rooms were worth even in that year of high
prices and high wages. The country was just moving into one
of those fabulous eras which are later referred to as the Gay
Forties or the Golden Sixtiesa pleasant period of national
euphoria. It was a stimulating time to be alivewhile it
lasted.
"All right," Oliver said resignedly. "I'll do my best."
But he was conscious, as the next few days went by, that he
was not doing his best. There were several reasons for that.
From the beginning the idea of making himself a nuisance to
his tenants had been Sue's, not Oliver's. And if Oliver had
been a little determined the whole project would never have
got under way. Reason was on Sue's side, but
For one thing, the tenants were so fascinating. All they said
and did had a queer sort of inversion to it, as if a mirror had
been held up to ordinary living and in the reflection
showed strange variations from the norm. Their minds
worked on a different basic premise, Oliver thought, from his
own. They seemed to derive covert amusement from the
most unamusing things; they patronized, they were aloof with
a quality of cold detachment which did not prevent them
from laughing inexplicably far too often for Oliver's comfort.
He saw them occasionally, on their way to and from their
rooms. They were polite and distant, not he suspected, from
anger at his presence but from sheer indifference.
Most of the day they spent out of the house. The perfect
May weather held unbroken and they seemed to give them-
selves up wholeheartedly to admiration of it, entirely confident
that the warm, pale-gold sunshine and the scented air would
not be interrupted by rain or cold. They were so sure of it
that Oliver felt uneasy.
They took only one meal' a day in the house, a late dinner.
And their reactions to the meal were unpredictable. Laughter
greeted some of the dishes, and a sort of delicate disgust oth-
ers. No one would touch the salad, for instance. And the fish
seemed to cause a wave of queer embarrassment around the
table.
They dressed elaborately for each dinner. The manhis
name was Omerielooked extremely handsome in his dinner
clothes, but he seemed a little sulky and Oliver twice heard
the women laughing because he had to wear black. Oliver
entertained a sudden vision, for no reason, of the man in
garments as bright and subtly cut as the women's, and it
seemed somehow very right for him. He wore even the dark
clothing with a certain flamboyance, as if cloth-of-gold would
be more normal for him.
When they were in the house at other mealtimes, they ate
in their rooms. They must have brought a great deal of food
with them, from whatever mysterious place they had come.
Oliver wondered with increasing curiosity where it might be.
Delicious odours drifted into the hall sometimes, at odd hours,
from their- closed doors. Oliver could not identify them, but
almost always they smelled irresistible. A few times the food
smell was rather shockingly unpleasant, almost nauseating. It
takes a connoisseur, Oliver reflected, to appreciate the deca-
dent. And these people, most certainly, were connoisseurs.
Why they lived so contentedly in this huge ramshackle old
house was a question that disturbed his dreams at night. Or
why they refused to move. He caught some fascinating
glimpses into their rooms, which appeared to have been
changed almost completely by additions he could not have
defined very clearly from the brief sights he had of them. The
feeling of luxury which his first glance at them had evoked
was confirmed by the richness of the hangings they had ap-
parently brought with them, the half-glimpsed ornaments,
the pictures on the walls, even the whiffs of exotic perfume
that floated from half-open doors.
He saw the women go by him in the halls, moving softly
through the brown dimness in their gowns so uncannily perfect
in fit, so lushly rich, so glowingly coloured they seemed un-
real. That poise born of confidence in the subservience of the
world gave them an imperious aloofness, but more than once
Oliver, meeting the blue gaze of the woman with the red
hair and the soft, tanned skin, thought he saw quickened in-
terest. She smiled at him in the dimness and went by in a
haze of fragrance and a halo of incredible richness, and the
warmth of the smile lingered after she had gone.
He knew she did not mean this aloofness to last between
them. From the very first he was sure of that. When the time
came she would make the opportunity to be alone with him.
The thought was confusing and tremendously exciting. There
was nothing he could do but wait, knowing she would see
him when it suited her.
On the third day he lunched with Sue in a little downtown
restaurant overlooking the great sweep of the metropolis across
the river far below. Sue had shining brown curls and brown
eyes, and her chin was a bit more prominent than is strictly
accordant with beauty. From childhood Sue had known what
she wanted and how to get it, and it seemed to Oliver just now
that she had never wanted anything quite so much as the sale
of this house.
"It's such a marvellous offer for the old mausoleum," she
said, breaking into a roll with a gesture of violence. "We'll
never have a chance like that again, and prices are so high
we'll need the money to start housekeeping. Surely you can
do something, Oliver!"
"I'm trying," Oliver assured her uncomfortably.
"Have you heard anything more from that madwoman
who wants to buy it?"
Oliver shook his head. "Her attorney phoned again yester-
day. Nothing new. I wonder who she is."
"I don't think even the attorney knows. All this mystery
I don't like it, Oliver. Even those Sancisco peopleWhat
did they do today?"
Oliver laughed. "They spent about an hour this morning
telephoning movie theatres in the city, checking up on a lot of
third-rate films they want to see parts of."
"Parts of? But why?"
"I don't know. I think . . . oh, nothing. More coffee?"
The trouble was, he thought he did know. It was too unlikely
a guess to tell Sue about, and without familiarity with the
Sancisco oddities she would only think Oliver was losing his
mind. But he. had from their talk, a definite impression that
there was an actor in bit parts in all these films whose per-
formances they mentioned with something very near to awe.
They referred to him as Golconda, which didn't appear to be
his name, so that Oliver had no way of guessing which ob-
scure bit player it was they admired so deeply. Golconda
might have been the name of a character he had once played
and with superlative skill, judging by the comments of the
Sanciscosbut to Oliver it meant nothing at all.
"They do funny things," he said, stirring his coffee reflec-
tively. "Yesterday Omeriethat's the mancame in with a
book of poems published about five years ago, and all of them
handled it like a first edition of Shakespeare. I never even
heard of the author, but he seems to be a tin god in their
country, wherever that is."
"You still don't know? Haven't they even dropped any
hints?"
"We don't do much talking," Oliver reminded her with
some irony.
"I know, but Oh, well I guess it doesn't matter. Go on,
what else do they do?"
"Well, this morning they were going to spend studying
'Golconda' and his great art, and this afternoon I think
they're taking a trip up the river to some sort of shrine I
never heard of. It isn't very far, wherever it is, because I
know they're coming back for dinner. Some great man's birth-
place, I thinkthey promised to take home souvenirs of the
place if they could get any. They're typical tourists, all right
if I could only figure out what's behind the whole thing.
It doesn't make sense."
"Nothing about that house makes sense any more. I do
wish"
She went on in a petulant voice, but Oliver ceased suddenly
to hear her, because just outside the door, walking with im-
perial elegance on her high heels, a familiar figure passed. He
did not see her face, but he thought he would know that poise,
that richness of line and motion, anywhere on earth.
"Excuse me a minute," he muttered to Sue, and was out of
his chair before she could speak. He made the door in half
a dozen long strides, and the beautifully elegant passerby was
only a few steps away when he got there. Then, with the words
he had meant to speak already half uttered, he fell silent
and stood there staring.
It was not the red-haired woman. It was not her dark com-
panion. It was a stranger. He watched, speechless, while the
lovely, imperious creature moved on through the crowd and
vanished, moving with familiar poise and assurance and an
equally familiar strangeness as if the beautiful and ex-
quisitely fitted garments she wore were an exotic costume to
her, as they had always seemed to the Sancisco women.
Every other woman on the street looked untidy and ill at
ease beside her. Walking like a queen, she melted into the
crowd andLwas gone.
She came from their country, Oliver told himself dizzily. So
someone else nearby had mysterious tenants in this month of
perfect May weather. Someone else was puzzling in vain to-
day over the strangeness of the people from the nameless
land.
In silence he went back to Sue.
The door stood invitingly ajar in the brown dimness of the
upper hall. Oliver's steps slowed as he drew near it, and his
heart began to quicken correspondingly. It was the red-haired
woman's room, and he thought the door was not open by acci-
dent. Her name, he knew now, was Kleph.
The door creaked a little on its hinges and from within a
very sweet voice said lazily, "Won't you come in?"
The room looked very different indeed. The big bed had
been pushed back against the wall, and a cover thrown over
it that brushed the floor all around looked like soft-haired fur
except that it was pale blue-green and sparkled as if every
hair were tipped with invisible crystals. Three books lay open
on the fur, and a very curious-looking magazine with faintly
luminous printing and a page of pictures that at first glance
appeared three-dimensional. Also a tiny porcelain pipe en-
crusted with porcelain flowers, and a thin wisp of smoke float-
ing from the bowl.
Above the bed a broad picture hung, framing a square of
blue water so real Oliver had to look twice to be sure it was
not rippling gently from left to right. From the ceiling swung
a crystal globe on a glass cord. It turned gently, the light
from the windows making curved rectangles in its sides.
Under the centre window a sort of chaise-longue stood
which Oliver had not seen before. He could only assume it
was at least partly pneumatic and had been brought in th6 lug-
gage. There was a very rich-looking quilted cloth covering
and hiding It, embossed all over in shining metallic pat-
terns.
Kleph moved slowly from the door and sank upon the
chaise-longue with a little sigh of content. The couch accom-
modated itself to her body with what looked like delightful
comfort. Kleph wriggled a little and then smiled up at Oliver.
"Do come on in. Sit over there, where you can see out the
window. I love your beautiful spring weather. You know,
there never was a May like it in civilized times." She said
that quite seriously, her blue eyes on Oliver's, and there was
a hint of patronage in her voice, as if the weather had been
arranged especially for her.
Oliver started across the room and then paused and looked
down in amazement at the floor, which felt unstable. He had
not noticed before that the carpet was pure white, unspotted,
and sank about an inch under the pressure of the feet. He
saw then that Kleph's feet were bare, or almost bare. She
wore something like gossamer buskins of filmy net, fitting her
feet exactly. The bare soles were pink as if they had been
rouged, and the nails had a liquid gleam like tiny mirrors.
He moved closer, and was not as surprised as he should have
been to see that they really were tiny mirrors, painted with
some lacquer that gave them reflecting surfaces.
"Do sit down," Kleph said again, waving a white-sleeved
arm towards a chair by the window. She wore a garment
that looked like short, soft down, loosely cut but follow-
摘要：

VINTAGESEASONbyHenryKuttnerTHREEPEOPLEcameupthewalktotheoldmansionjustatdawnonaperfectMaymorning.OliverWilsoninhispyjamaswatchedthemfromanupperwindowthroughahazeofcon-flictingemotions,resentmentpredominant.Hedidn'twantthemthere.Theywereforeigners.Heknewonlythatmuchaboutthem.TheyhadthecuriousnameofSa...

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