Some people, especially the Americans, were disposed to cut Clara Cray some slack when it became known she would begin serving a prison sentence in the morning. She had a calm, an almost saintly demeanor that was puzzling to others, especially the French.
“Considering she goes to prison tomorrow,” whispered Anne Servian Béridot.
“She’s the American woman who stole the boiseries of Madame du Barry,” said Carole Simonot.
“That is she? She’s a friend of Anne-Sophie?” Marie-Hélène Pinard inquired.
“Oui. More of Teem‘s, I gather. She and her husband, but it is she who did it.”
“That seems so incredibly wicked. Some Americans are nice, but they have no idea of history. They only think of money. Frankly I am surprised Anne-Sophie would have her here.”
“Well, she goes to jail, so let that be a lesson to us all,” said Anne Servian Béridot.
“But what is the lesson?” wondered Pussy Lautremont, observing that the handsome Monsieur de Persand appeared to think of the radiant Clara as a heroine, a great woman, as La Pasionaria or Marianne herself.
“Oh? Can a woman be a moral agent?” said Estelle, talking to someone else. “I think not. Poor Clara thinks she’s going to jail to save animals, but of course she hasn’t realized that a woman is a moral receptacle. She receives, enacts, or defies the most conservative strictures her society imposes, but she cannot act or innovate to change them. A woman can only be admired or condemned by their lights. She doesn’t seem to know that. At least there have been very few women to act or innovate. Oh, Joan of Arc. How many others can you name? ”
The recent kisses of Antoine were still on Clara’s lips, stolen on the way over, behind the EDF scaffold in front of the antiquary’s. This visceral dissolving sensation was probably happiness. Was happiness a fire you had to keep stoking? Or was it like a painting on the wall, permanently in place? She would have to keep it in memory for three months at least; then it could be renewed, refueled. She was thinking that perhaps she had been right to scorn people who searched for happiness. She had always believed that searching for it led to a degree of self-involvement that was unpleasant and possibly wicked, and was futile. To look for happiness was like looking at the sun during an eclipse. Not only did the sun disappear, but you burned your eyeballs too. Yet here, strangely, unsought, was happiness.
It wasn’t that she believed in sacrifice, a dubious virtue that was always urged on women in particular and seemed to give them physical ailments. She remembered the headache she had had. But there was a satisfaction is knowing that by being in prison, she was paying in advance for a future of intended sinning, as often as possible, with Antoine de Persand.
“One of the great happinesses of my calling,” the Abbé was saying, raising his glass for the first toast, “is to marry those whom I have seen as little girls, and given to them their first communion, and then to their husbands before God in marriage—and of course to welcome their firstborn, and all the little ones who come after.... I remember Anne-Sophie so well, those curls, always with skinned knees. In those days she was riding, and it was so clear she was brilliant at that. But devout, she was always attentive to her duty. And so to Anne-Sophie, entering into this sacred state, and to Thomas, may his heart be prepared for Christ, and to their future unblemished by any hardship, and may they ever harbor a knowledge of their blessings....”
Anne-Sophie had slipped away to her grandmother’s bedroom to change into a dress for the departure. A rising note of merriment from downstairs as the dinner guests, well-champagned, were dancing. In her stomach the beginning of a feeling of release, as if she had swallowed one of those Chinese pellets that unfurl in water to become flowers and castles, structures of unforeseeable color and complexity: marriage. She was starting to feel, or to realize she was, married. The fizzy sensation in her stomach came with a qualified feeling of optimism she hadn’t been feeling before, or at least a feeling that what was done was done, and if something went wrong with the dinner, tant pis. At last she could eat dinner! No wonder she was cheering up.
For since you can’t go back, you might as well set your face forward. Tim saw his face, unchanged, in the mirror as he untied the wedding tie and took out the sober stripe he’d brought along earlier. When he came in here, the den, and closed the door, he had found Madame d‘Argel, Anne-Sophie’s grandmother, hiding behind it, smoking a cigarette. When discovered, her soft old face took on a wild look between glee and panic.
“You‘re—I know you,” she said. “They won’t let me smoke.”
“Who won’t?”
“My daughter-in-law and some others, and the doctor.”
“That’s a hell of a thing,” said Tim. “Stay, I’m just changing my coat. You can smoke. It’s my wedding day and I say you can smoke.”
As he stepped into the hall, he heard his father’s voice. “To Anne-Sophie and Tim,” said Jerry Nolinger, plainly uncomfortable at public speaking, but with a great deal of cheer and goodwill showing through, “I hope they will be as happy as the rest of us have been. Happier, actually. Well, I shouldn’t put it that way. Even happier, I should say. Well, I mean, of course, as happy as humans can be, and a lucky guy like Tim will have no reason not to be, with such an angel for a bride, and thanks to all of you French friends for making our visit so pleasant here, and, thanks, so let’s drink to Anne-Sophie and Tim!”
“Hear hear, hear hear.”
He looked around. Anne-Sophie was just coming out of her grandmother’s bedroom. Her laughter came directly to his ear over the slightly unintelligible cacophany of English and French that rose to greet them. They sought one another’s hands over the shoulders of the guests crowding around them.
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Le Mariage Page 35
