Mila 18 - Leon Uris [82]
Chris and Eileen were married three days before graduation. A week later they were aboard ship for a honeymoon trip.
No more idyllic four months were ever lived by two people. They loved each other with an energy reserved for the young in a fairyland setting of snowy mountains and roaring fireplaces. Although half oblivious with thoughts of Eileen, Chris managed to learn the practical methods of journalism taught by the veteran Swiss News staff.
At the end of the schooling Chris was assigned, as promised, as a relief man between New York and Washington. Eileen was homesick to return, which seemed entirely natural for a girl who had lived her life in New Jersey.
There was but one short detour he had to take home, and that was through Rome.
The Count Alphonse de Monti had aged. He was a somewhat seedy representative of faded nobility. Yet he put up a lavish front: the cars and the servants and the women were still there. So were the debts. All his failures seemed to make him a more devout Fascist, for it was easy to blame enemies who did not exist.
Alphonse de Monti was a gentleman to the core. He was polite to his son and his son’s bride, but his coolness made it completely obvious he would never accept the fact that his son would not be the things he wanted.
Chris left Italy with a feeling that he might never see Poppa again.
Chris and Eileen became members of those faceless legions of Manhattan cliff dwellers who rushed to dinner and theater, washed down too many martinis at lunch, and made certain their “new love and independence” would not be marred by the sudden announcement that a child was on the way. Chris thrived on all of it.
Eileen didn’t tell Chris how lonely it was when he was away in Washington. He was happy—so happy. And a new marriage is something large and powerful, the little flaws and cracks often invisible in the over-all magnitude. Each reunion after a week in Washington buried the loneliness.
Six months of it. Then, while he was away in Washington, he was suddenly called to a conference in Denver. Next time she tried tagging along in Washington. It was worse than staying in New York. She was in his way. A journalist had to have mobility and no limitation on hours, no worries about a wife waiting in a hotel room.
“Chris honey, why don’t I take a job? You know, Mom and Dad did spend a fortune getting me through Columbia and—”
Enough of the old-country pride had rubbed off on him to make the idea of a De Monti wife working unthinkable.
Oscar Pecora arrived just in time.
“You are one of our bright young stars, Christopher. We have an extraordinary opportunity. Bureau chief in Rio de Janeiro.”
Rio! And less than a year with Swiss News!
Chris was so happy that Eileen covered her disappointment, as a good wife will do. This was his life and it was a great opportunity. She was planning to have a talk with Chris about buying a place in Jersey, near Mom and Dad. Maybe starting a family. They’d had their fun. ...
But Eileen held her tongue and packed and went along.
Chris fitted in every newsmen’s bar and in the lobbies of the capitols and in the offices of prime ministers and at the scenes of the disasters. Hours of light and darkness and light and spaces of great distance had lost meaning to him when a story was involved.
They had a beautiful apartment on the Avenida Beira Mar that hugged the bay. She came to learn every corner of it and how many squares were in the marble of the entrance hall and how many different colors there were in the drapes.
She tried very, very hard to assimilate herself into that circle of diplomats who seemed to spend their entire lives holding a cocktail glass for the incoming attaché of culture or the outgoing second secretary.
Eileen got a pair of cats and stroked them and paced the floor in lounging pajamas and