Emeralds

Renata’s emeralds are both a lavish gift and a difficult charge for Richard Cantwell to carry. Their physical journey—from her offer, to his buttoned pocket, to a safe at the Gritti Palace Hotel in her name—gives material form to their intimacy while exposing the limits of the security and future he can provide. The stones are precious, but their meaning lies less in ownership than in the trust, obligation, and separation that each attempted transfer reveals.

The Gift and Its Uneasy Reception

Before the emeralds become something Richard must safeguard, the couple’s conversation about presents establishes the emotional problem they will carry. At a jewellery-shop window, Richard asks whether there is anything Renata truly wants and offers to obtain it the following morning, even if he has to borrow money from Cipriani. Renata says she wants nothing, but observes that he never gives her presents. His answer—that she is much richer than he is, and that he brings small things from the PX and pays for drinks and meals—shows the mismatch between his everyday gestures and the kind of gift she has in mind.

Renata then insists on giving him the stones anyway. She says her mother will understand, that she need not tell her for a long time, and that her maid will not inform her mother. Richard does not think he should accept them; Renata asks him to do so for her pleasure. The exchange reverses their earlier positions: the man who offered to buy her something becomes the hesitant recipient of a gift she chooses to give. Her insistence makes acceptance an act of care toward her, but it also places an exceptional possession in his keeping.

Weight, Value, and Safekeeping

Richard handles the emeralds as physical things, not merely as an idea of wealth. He takes them from his pocket and feels them slide from his bad hand into his good one. Their coolness gives way to warmth as they take warmth from his hand, and he notices the sensation against his own body. The image makes their material presence intimate: the stones are in contact with the limitations of his injured body, and their warmth is felt rather than abstractly understood.

Their value sharpens his awareness of the risk. Richard considers that he should have put them in an envelope and locked them away, then wonders what security could be better than his own. He wants to get them back to Renata quickly. At the same time, he finds the episode enjoyable and estimates that the stones are worth no more than a quarter of a million, a sum he compares with what he might earn in four hundred years before admitting he needs to check the figure. The comic uncertainty of the calculation does not diminish the scale of the responsibility: the emeralds represent wealth far beyond his ordinary means.

He puts the stones in his pyjama pocket, covers them with a handkerchief, and buttons the pocket. His reflection that a person learns to use flaps and buttons on every pocket turns a practical safeguard into a measure of experience. Later, when asked whether he still has the stones, he specifies that they are in his upper-left pocket, buttoned down. The repeated attention to pockets makes safekeeping a visible action: the gift is close to him, but closeness is not the same as secure possession.

From His Pocket to the Safe

Richard eventually arranges a more formal safeguard. He tells Domenico that he has something in an envelope to be put in the safe, and says it may be claimed either by him, in person or in writing, or by the person he has just contacted. Domenico replies that the instruction need not be put in writing. The arrangement makes the emeralds’ custody conditional and legible: Richard is not simply hiding them, but establishing who may retrieve them.

Later, as he and Renata leave into sunlight and wind, Richard tells her that her stones are in the safe at the Gritti Palace Hotel, in her name. When she calls them his, he corrects her, gently but firmly. The distinction matters. He has carried them, felt their weight, and taken responsibility for protecting them, but he will not convert that responsibility into a claim of ownership. The safe restores the gift to Renata in practical terms even as the exchange between them remains emotionally shared.

Renata asks whether he would take one stone as a lucky charm. Richard refuses because the emeralds are too valuable. The refusal echoes his earlier reluctance to accept the gift, but its meaning has changed: he has accepted enough to guard the stones and arrange their return, yet will not keep even one as a token. The object cannot be made harmless by being reduced to a keepsake. Its value remains bound to Renata and to the limits she and Richard recognize in their circumstances.

Gifts, Love, and What Cannot Be Given

The emeralds also complicate Richard’s own account of what he has given Renata. Later, he remembers her complaint that he never gave her anything and distinguishes the small moor’s head from a true present: Renata selected it, and he bought it, so the purchase does not satisfy the meaning of giving. This retrospective judgment recalls the jewellery-shop conversation and suggests why an expensive object cannot by itself settle the question. A gift depends on the relation enacted through choosing, offering, accepting, or refusing it.

Richard imagines giving Renata security, all his love, and all his worldly goods, but recognizes that security no longer exists and that his possessions are meagre apart from two good shotguns, his soldier suits, medals and citations, books, and a retired colonel’s pay. Against this inventory, the emeralds are almost impossibly valuable; yet they do not supply the security he wants to give her. Their transfer therefore brings both tenderness and limitation into focus. Renata can entrust them to Richard, and he can protect them and return them to her name, but neither the stones nor his devotion can make the future they cannot share into a secure possession.