Chapter summary - 2 Flashcards
About 18 months before Dick Diver meets the beautiful girl at the clinic, she is brought there by her father, Devereux Warren. She is 16 years old, and has been acting erratically and saying crazy things for several months. Much of her wild claims are about random men attacking her. Dr. Dohmler feels something is missing from the story but agrees to diagnose the girl. His diagnosis is schizophrenia in its most acute phase. He is shocked Warren does not return to visit his daughter and finally insists he must come. Warren clearly wants to wash his hands of the entire thing, but he does come back to the clinic. There he breaks down as he admits he committed incest with her. Afterward, she seemed fine—until her symptoms started to display several years later. Dohmler is outraged and sends Warren to a Zurich hotel for the night, instructing him to come back in the morning.
Book 2, Chapter 3
Dohmler agrees to take care of the Warren girl, but only if her father agrees to keep away from her “indefinitely, with an absolute minimum of five years.” He complies, now seeming only to worry about the news of the affair getting back to Chicago, where he is a prominent, wealthy man.
Franz Gregorovius explains to Dick his entry into the girl’s life has been a positive thing. Dick agrees, saying he saw progress in her letters. Then Franz asks if they can see the letters she has mailed herself from Zurich, and Dick agrees. He characterizes her mood in them as “hopeful and normally hungry for life.”
Knowing Dick is about to see the girl, Franz warns him “to go very gently.” Then they talk about Dick’s plans for the future. Dick dines with Franz and his wife that night. As the chapter ends Dick is musing about his desire to be loved.
Book 2, Chapter 4
As this chapter opens Dick is visiting his colleague and friend Franz Gregorovius, at Dohmler’s clinic, having just returned from his time in France. It turns out he had met a beautiful girl at the clinic two years earlier, when he was there to say goodbye to Franz. He met the girl with her nurse, quite by accident as he was walking on the grounds, and he had a conversation with her. She had become somewhat smitten with him and has written him many letters.
The chapter includes quite a few excerpts from the letters. Dick puts them into two classes: one of “marked pathological turn” and one that seems “entirely normal.” However, his correspondence with the girl trailed off when Dick got the flu and then grew interested in a young woman from Wisconsin who was working as a telephone operator at his army headquarters.
Now Franz is eager to give him the background story about the girl. Dick is eager to hear it.
Book 2, Chapter 2
Book 2 goes backward in time, with Chapter 1 set in Zurich in spring 1919. The purpose is to explain more details about Dick’s background. He is 28 years old and has just returned to Zurich. Dick has studied as a Rhodes scholar, gotten his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, received another degree while working at a clinic in Zurich two years earlier, lived in Vienna, served in the war (at a desk job in France), and is enjoying his life so much he calls himself “lucky Dick.”
Book 2, Chapter 1
This chapter tells of the first meetings between Dick Diver and Nicole after his return to Zurich. The first evening Nicole advises him she will be leaving the clinic in June, in the care of her older sister. She hopes they might go to Como. Dick is dazzled by her beauty and feels himself falling under her spell, which gives her more confidence and an excitement “that seemed to reflect all the excitement of the world.”
During his next visit they listen to some records on Nicole’s phonograph. When she sings to him, he is deeply affected, and then taken in with the pure sweetness of her.
Book 2, Chapter 5
Dick and Nicole meet again in May, when he takes her out to lunch in Zurich. He struggles to maintain some amount of distance between them, wanting her to continue growing in confidence and happiness with or without him, but “Nicole brought everything to his feet, gifts of sacrificial ambrosia, of worshipping myrtle.”
Four weeks after Dick’s return to Zurich, he is feeling established there, working on writing a text. He meets with Franz Gregorovius, who insists Dick must meet with Dr. Dohmler about his relationship with Nicole. At first Dick is reluctant but then he agrees. The outcome of their meeting is Dick must make a commitment to stop seeing Nicole at all. Dohmler reaches this conclusion after hearing Dick say he is “half in love with her” and has even thought of marrying her.
Book 2, Chapter 6
That evening Dick sees Nicole and must begin extricating himself from their relationship. He advises her to go to America and “be a débutante and fall in love—and be happy.” He goes on to assure her of her future happiness and ability to have a “perfectly normal life.” His words pain her greatly; hearing them, her “world had fallen to pieces.” Yet she holds herself together and says she must get back to the clinic. Dick can feel her unhappiness. He goes back a few hours later to try to complete the severing of the tie, but Nicole declines to see him. He expects her to reach out to him in the next few days, but she doesn’t, and Franz Gregorovius assures him she is taking it all quite well.
Book 2, Chapter 7
Dick Diver is miserable over the next weeks. He misses Nicole desperately. When he spies her with her sister one day, it’s as if all the air is sucked out of the world around him. His response to his severe emotions is to write a professional memo to himself, pointing out the likelihood of her relapse. He busies himself with a further dalliance with the telephone operator from his military days, making plans for a trip home, and diving more deeply into his writing.
Then, when he takes a small vacation in the Swiss Alps, he runs into Nicole and her sister, traveling with an Italian admirer of Nicole’s named Conte de Marmora, the young man’s parents, and Nicole’s sister, Baby Warren. Nicole’s continuing love for Dick is clear, and although he tries to drown out the voices advising him against pursuing the affair, he decides they are “unimportant voices that did not know how much he was loved.”
Book 2, Chapter 8
That evening, Dick Diver joins Nicole and her party for dinner at their hotel. Baby Warren seeks Dick’s professional opinions about Nicole, whom she worries about constantly. He reassures Baby Nicole is mostly fine. Baby tells him she’s planning to marry Nicole off to one successful doctor or another in Chicago, thereby ensuring her safe future. Dick finds the idea ridiculous.
When they notice Nicole is missing, Dick goes to find her. She is standing by the lake and tells Dick she needed to escape from the excitement of the day, feeling overstimulated. Then she talks to Dick about how much she desires him—and how she knows “everything about you and me.” Finally, as she begs him to give her a chance, he gives in and kisses her—and likes it a lot.
A sudden storm blows up, and Dick and Nicole must run back to the hotel. By the time they arrive, Dick is asking himself a crucial question: “For Doctor Diver to marry a mental patient? How did it happen? Where did it begin?” He is in love.
The next day Dick goes for a swim and is gone until dinner. Upon his return, he finds two notes. One is from Nicole, thanking him for the best night of her life. The other is from Baby, announcing she has had to leave and is giving Nicole over to his care, to take back to the clinic. The second note angers Dick greatly. He assumes he is the doctor Baby has decided to marry Nicole off to, although Fitzgerald points out the error of this thinking. Baby just wants her life to be convenient for her at all times, and this plan is what works for her at the moment. As Dick delivers Nicole to the door of the clinic, the future is clear: “her problem was one they had together for good now.”
Book 2, Chapter 9
September finds Dick telling Baby about his intentions to marry Nicole. She does not think it is advisable, but she also does not block it. She is mostly concerned he does not take advantage of Nicole’s money, which he says he could care less about.
Then the chapter suddenly shifts into a first-person narration by Nicole. It is not always clear to whom she is speaking, but the snippets are from the time of the marriage until the summer of 1925. Nicole reveals details about such things as the money arrangements being made as part of the marriage, her travels with Dick, and the births of their children. After her daughter is born, she suffers a breakdown and is hospitalized.
Sometimes Nicole is speaking to Dick in these sections, about their marriage and how much she loves it. At other times her words read like diary entries. She mentions the Norths and Tommy Barban, saying she knows Tommy is in love with her. What is clear overall is Nicole struggles still with mental illness. She reveals her split personality, saying sometimes she is Dick and sometimes she is her son. This narration continues up to the point at which Rosemary enters the scene.
Book 2, Chapter 10
This chapter opens in August 1925 as Dick and Mrs. Speers are together at a café. She makes reference to the events that have occurred in Paris, but Dick impatiently responds Nicole is fine.
Rosemary and her mother are leaving the next day, and Mrs. Speers is thanking Dick for being “the first man Rosemary ever cared for.” Pretending he is as objective as ever about Rosemary, Dick tries to dismiss the comments lightly: “She’s over it already.” But then he owns up to the truth: “I’m in love with Rosemary.”
After the two part, Dick goes home to his work room and thinks about how uncomfortable he is with the display of wealth he and Nicole have grown accustomed to. He truly wishes to focus on his work again and makes a plan for a more plausible approach to it.
He drinks gin to prepare himself to deal with Nicole, keeping up “a perfect front” he had begun after her breakdown in Paris. He had arranged for Rosemary to disappear and to leave for home immediately with Nicole. When Nicole tries to get him to say positive things about Rosemary on the train ride home, he resists, knowing he simply cannot feed any jealousy in her. She is fragile, and it annoys him.
Book 2, Chapter 11
Dick approaches Nicole in the garden and tells her about his luncheon with Mrs. Speers, then quickly changes the subject to talk about a man named Bartholomew Tailor whom he also ran into. This is the type of man he and Nicole detest and hate to see in their part of the Riviera, so it is a safe topic.
When Dick goes into the house, his thoughts return to his dissatisfaction with their lifestyle and the way Nicole’s wealth seems to “belittle his work.” In addition, he is tired of having to live such a tightly controlled life, always leery about any ill effects for Nicole. Just now he has not even been able to play the piano, afraid it might remind her of the events of the past few weeks.
The chapter ends in December. Nicole seems to have become “well-knit” again, and the Divers decide to spend the holidays in the Swiss Alps.
Book 2, Chapter 12
In Gstaad Nicole and Dick Diver are with Baby Warren and two suitors she has brought along. Nicole desperately wants Dick to be happy, and descends into baby talk to try to get him to relax and laugh, saying, “Why don’t you meet some of these ickle durls and dance with them.” But as was made clear in the last chapter, he is careful not to let her see him looking at younger women—or doing anything that might make her snap—and the effort is sapping his vitality.
Dick’s friend Franz Gregorovius is coming to visit with Dick for one day of the holidays, and Dick is looking forward to seeing him. When Franz arrives, he gets right down to business. He has come to see if Dick might be interested in going in together to take over a clinic in Zurich. Baby eavesdrops on their conversation and offers her opinion that it is a good idea. Dick does not give a definitive answer, mostly enraged at Baby’s interference, but does say he could see him and Nicole established in Zurich.
Throughout the evening, Dick watches for “a special girl.” He has a roving eye, although he hides it from Nicole. When he spies the girl one last time at the end of the evening, however, he has lost interest.
By the time Franz leaves Gstaad, Dick has made up his mind. He decides to accept the proposition.
Book 2, Chapter 13
The Divers have been in Zurich for 18 months as this chapter opens. Dick awakens from a dream about war and diagnoses in himself: “Non-combatant’s shell-shock.” He thinks about Nicole’s loneliness and continuing need to own him. It seems being back in Zurich has not eased the repression he feels around the relationship at all.
When morning arrives Lanier comes to watch Dick shave. He and his father have developed a closer relationship in Zurich, and Dick is glad of that. He is now 38 years old.
Dick and Nicole have added a great deal of class and beauty to the clinic, so it now rather resembles a country club. Dick seems to enjoy his work, and many of his patients adore him. He muses this morning about some of his current cases. His most fascinating is an American painter who came to the clinic from Paris, where her cousin found her raving mad among other artists. She suffers acutely physically, with sores all over her body, but her mind remains mostly sharp. He feels a certain level of love for her and great empathy for her suffering. Readers are able to follow Dick on his rounds that morning and meet several more of his patients.
Book 2, Chapter 14
After lunch Dick goes to the house where a distraught Nicole awaits him with a letter she demands he reads. Addressed to Nicole, it is from a recently discharged female patient who is accusing Dick of molesting her daughter who was with her during much of her treatment. Dick recalls the daughter as a “flirtatious little brunette” and remembers he had kissed her in an “almost indulgent way,” but went no further than that.
Dick assures Nicole of his innocence, pointing out the writer of the letter is “deranged.” Nicole is unconvinced, so Dick takes a strong tone with her and tells her to get the children so they can go on their planned trip to an area fair. As he drives them, he knows Nicole is very unstable. Sure enough, when they get to the fair, Nicole suddenly takes off running. Knowing he must give chase, Dick deposits the children with an attendant at a lottery wheel and desperately looks for his wife, finally finding her riding a Ferris wheel and laughing crazily. He takes her firmly by the arm, again taking a strong tone with her, but she remains resistant and refers to him as Svengali, a fictional character who seduces young women.
Remaining strong, Dick finally sees Nicole succumb as she begs, “Help me, help me, Dick!” They go to find the children and start the drive home. The feeling is of grief and sorrow. Dick knows what awaits him once they get home, a return to “the régime relaxed a year before.”
Suddenly, as they near the clinic on a treacherous patch of road, Nicole grabs the wheel and nearly sends them to their death. Luckily, the car is trapped at a 90-degree angle against a tree. Dick is absolutely furious. He sends Lanier and Topsy to a nearby inn to get help. Nicole’s insane action is to look at herself in a compact mirror and smooth back her hair.
The proprietor of the inn soon arrives, and Dick tries to get Nicole safely out of the car. Her response is to jump out on her own and nearly fall down the hillside. Dick sends her to the inn to wait with the children. Then, worried about what she might do next, he decides to abandon the car for now, and he hurries up after her.
Book 2, Chapter 15
