by Richard Ford
“You’re in France, aren’t you?” Barbara said.
“Yes,” Austin said. “That’s right. Why?”
“I supposed so.” She said this as though the thought of it disgusted her. “Why not, I guess. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
“So. Come home when you’re tired of whatever it is, whatever her name is.” She said this very mildly.
“Maybe I will,” Austin said.
“Maybe I’ll be waiting, too,” Barbara said. “Miracles still happen. I’ve had my eyes opened now, though.”
“Great,” he said, and he started to say something else, but he thought he heard her hang up. “Hello?” he said. “Hello? Barbara, are you there?”
“Oh, go to hell,” Barbara said, and then she did hang up.
For two days Austin took long, exhausting walks in completely arbitrary directions, surprising himself each time by where he turned up, then taking a cab back to his apartment. His instincts still seemed all wrong, which frustrated him. He thought the Place de la Concorde was farther away from this apartment than it was, and in the wrong direction. He couldn’t always remember which way the river ran. And unhappily he kept passing the same streets and movie theater playing Cinema Paradiso and the same news kiosk, over and over, as if he continually walked in a circle.
He called his other friend, a man named Hank Bullard, who’d once worked for Lilienthal but had decided to start an air-conditioning business of his own in Vitry. He was married to a Frenchwoman and lived in a suburb. They made plans for a lunch, then Hank canceled for business reasons—an emergency trip out of town. Hank said they should arrange another date but didn’t specifically suggest one. Austin ended up having lunch alone in an expensive brasserie on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, seated behind a glass window, trying to read Le Monde but growing discouraged as the words he didn’t understand piled up. He would read the Herald Tribune, he thought, to keep up with the world, and let his French build gradually.
There were even more tourists than a week earlier when he’d been here. The tourist season was beginning, and the whole place, he thought, would probably change and become unbearable. The French and the Americans, he decided, looked basically like each other; only their language and some soft, almost effeminate quality he couldn’t define distinguished them. Sitting at his tiny, round boulevard table, removed from the swarming passersby, Austin thought this street was full of people walking along dreaming of doing what he was actually doing, of picking up and leaving everything behind, coming here, sitting in cafés, walking the streets, possibly deciding to write a novel or paint watercolors, or just to start an air-conditioning business, like Hank Bullard. But there was a price to pay for that. And the price was that doing it didn’t feel the least romantic. It felt purposeless, as if he himself had no purpose, plus there was no sense of a future now, at least as he had always experienced the future—as a palpable thing you looked forward to confidently even if what it held might be sad or tragic or unwantable. The future was still there, of course; he simply didn’t know how to imagine it. He didn’t know, for instance, exactly what he was in Paris for, though he could perfectly recount everything that had gotten him here, to this table, to his plate of moules meunières, to this feeling of great fatigue, observing tourists, all of whom might dream whatever he dreamed but in fact knew precisely where they were going and precisely why they were here. Possibly they were the wise ones, Austin thought, with their warmly lighted, tightly constructed lives on faraway landscapes. Maybe he had reached a point, or even gone far beyond a point now, when he no longer cared what happened to himself—the crucial linkages of a good life, he knew, being small and subtle and in many ways just lucky things you hardly even noticed. Only you could fuck them up and never know quite how you’d done it. Everything just started to go wrong and unravel. Your life could be on a track to ruin, to your being on the street and disappearing from view entirely, and you, in spite of your best efforts, your best hope that it all go differently, you could only stand by and watch it happen.
For the next two days he did not call Joséphine Belliard, although he thought about calling her all the time. He thought he might possibly bump into her as she walked to work. His garish little roué’s apartment was only four blocks from the publishing house on rue de Lille, where, in a vastly different life, he had made a perfectly respectable business call a little more than a week before.
He walked down the nearby streets as often as he could—to buy a newspaper or to buy food in the little market stalls on the rue de Seine, or just to pass the shop windows and begin finding his way along narrow brick alleys. He disliked thinking that he was only in Paris because of Joséphine Belliard, because of a woman, and one he really barely knew but whom he nevertheless thought about constantly and made persistent efforts to see “accidentally.” He felt he was here for another reason, too, a subtle and insistent, albeit less specific one he couldn’t exactly express to himself but which he felt was expressed simply by his being here and feeling the way he felt.
Not once, though, did he see Joséphine Belliard on the rue de Lille, or walking along the Boulevard St.-Germain on her way to work, or walking past the Café de Flore or the Brasserie Lipp, where he’d had lunch with her only the week before and where the sole had been full of grit but he hadn’t mentioned it.
Much of the time, on his walks along strange streets, he thought about Barbara; and not with a feeling of guilt or even of loss, but normally, habitually, involuntarily. He found himself shopping for her, noticing a blouse or a scarf or an antique pendant or a pair of emerald earrings he could buy and bring home. He found himself storing away things to tell her—for instance, that the Sorbonne was actually named after somebody named Sorbon, or that France was seventy percent nuclear, a headline he deciphered off the front page of L’Express and that coursed around his mind like an electron with no polarity other than Barbara, who, as it happened, was a supporter of nuclear power. She occupied, he recognized, the place of final consequence—the destination for practically everything he cared about or noticed or imagined. But now, or at least for the present time, that situation was undergoing a change, since being in Paris and waiting his chance to see Joséphine lacked any customary destination, but simply started and stopped in himself. Though that was how he wanted it. And that was the explanation he had not exactly articulated in the last few days: he wanted things, whatever things there were, to be for him and only him.
On the third day, at four in the afternoon, he called Joséphine Belliard. He called her at home instead of her office, thinking she wouldn’t be at home and that he could leave a brief, possibly inscrutable recorded message, and then not call her for a few more days, as though he was too busy to try again any sooner. But when her phone rang twice she answered.
“Hi,” Austin said, stunned at the suddenness of Joséphine being on the line and only a short distance from where he was standing, and sounding unquestionably like herself. It made him feel vaguely faint. “It’s Martin Austin,” he managed to say feebly.
He heard a child scream in the background before Joséphine could say more than hello. “Nooooon!” the child, certainly Léo, screamed again.
“Where are you?” she said in a hectic voice. He heard something go crash in the room where she was. “Are you in Chicago now?”
“No, I’m in Paris,” Austin said, grappling with his composure and speaking very softly.
“Paris? What are you doing here?” Joséphine said, obviously surprised. “Are you on business again now?”
This, somehow, was an unsettling question. “No,” he said, still very faintly. “I’m not on business. I’m just here. I have an apartment.”
“Tu as un appartement!” Joséphine said in even greater surprise. “What for?” she said. “Why? Is your wife with you?”
“No,” Austin said. “I’m here alone. I’m planning on staying for a while.”
“Oooo-laaa,” Joséphine said. “Do you have a big f
ight at home? Is that the matter?”
“No,” Austin lied. “We didn’t have a big fight at home. I decided to take some time away. That’s not so unusual, is it?”
Léo screamed again savagely. “Ma-man!” Joséphine spoke to him patiently. “Doucement, doucement,” she said. “J’arrive. Une minute. Une minute.” One minute didn’t seem like very much time, but Austin didn’t want to stay on the phone long. Joséphine seemed much more French than he remembered. In his mind she had been almost an American, only with a French accent. “Okay. So,” she said, a little out of breath. “You are here now? In Paris?”
“I want to see you,” Austin said. It was the moment he’d been waiting for—more so even than the moment when he would finally see her. It was the moment when he would declare himself to be present. Unencumbered. Available. Willing. That mattered a great deal. He actually slipped his wedding ring off his finger and laid it on the table beside the phone.
“Yes?” Joséphine said. “What . . .” She paused, then resumed. “What do you like to do with me? When do you like? What?” She was impatient.
“Anything. Anytime,” Austin said, and suddenly felt the best he’d felt in days. “Tonight,” he said. “Or today. In twenty minutes.”
“In twenty minutes! Come on. No!” she said and laughed, but in an interested way, a pleased way—he could tell. “No, no, no,” she said. “I have to go to my lawyer in one hour. I have to find my neighbor now to stay with Léo. It is impossible now. I’m divorcing. You know this already. It’s very upsetting. Anyway.”
“I’ll stay with Léo,” Austin said rashly.
Joséphine laughed. “You’ll stay with him! You don’t have children, do you? You said this.” She laughed again.
“I’m not offering to adopt him,” Austin said. “But I’ll stay with him for an hour. Then you can have your neighbor come, and I’ll take you to dinner. How’s that?”
“He doesn’t like you,” Joséphine said. “He likes only his father best. He doesn’t even like me.”
“I’ll teach him some English,” Austin said. “I’ll teach him to say ‘Chicago Cubs.’” He could feel enthusiasm already leaching off. “We’ll be great friends.”
“What is Chicago Cubs?” Joséphine said.
“It’s a baseball team.” And he felt, just for an instant, bleak. Not because he wished he was home, or wished Barbara was here, or wished really anything was different. Everything was how he’d hoped it would be. He simply wished he hadn’t mentioned the Cubs. This was over-confident, he thought. It was the wrong thing to say. A mistake.
“So. Well,” Joséphine said, sounding businesslike. “You come here, then? I go to my lawyers to sign my papers. Then maybe we have a dinner together, yes?”
“Absolutely,” Austin said, bleakness vanished. “I’ll come right away. I’ll start in five minutes.” On the dark suede wall, under a little metal track light positioned to illuminate it, was a big oil painting of two men, naked and locked in a strenuous kiss and embrace. Neither man’s face was visible, and their bodies were weight lifters’ muscular bodies, their genitals hidden by their embroiled pose. They were seated on a rock, which was very crudely painted in. It was like Laocoön, Austin thought, only corrupted. He’d wondered if one of the men was the one who owned the apartment, or possibly the owner was the painter or the painter’s lover. He wondered if either one of them was alive this afternoon. He actually hated the painting and had already decided to take it down before he brought Joséphine here. Which was what he meant to do—bring her here, tonight if possible, and keep her with him until morning, when they could walk up and sit in the cool sun at the Deux Magots and drink coffee. Like Sartre.
“Martin?” Joséphine said. He was about to put down the phone and go move the smarmy Laocoön painting. He’d almost forgotten he was talking to her.
“What? I’m here,” Austin said. Though it might be fun to leave it up, he thought. It could be an icebreaker, something to laugh about, like the mirrors on the ceiling, before things got more serious.
“Martin, what are you doing here?” Joséphine said oddly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m here to see you, darling,” Austin said. “Why do you think? I said I’d see you soon, and I meant it. I guess I’m just a man of my word.”
“You are a very silly man, though,” Joséphine said and laughed, not quite so pleased as before. “But,” she said, “what I can do?”
“You can’t do anything,” Austin said. “Just see me tonight. After that you never have to see me again.”
“Yes. Okay,” Joséphine said. “That’s a good deal. Now. You come to here. Ciao.”
“Ciao,” Austin said oddly, not really being entirely sure what ciao meant.
6
Near the Odéon, striding briskly up the narrow street that ended at the Palais du Luxembourg, Austin realized he was arriving at Joséphine’s apartment with nothing in his hands—a clear mistake. Possibly some bright flowers would be a good idea, or a toy, a present of some minor kind which would encourage Léo to like him. Léo was four, and ill-tempered and spoiled. He was pale and had limp, wispy-thin dark hair and dark, penetrating eyes, and when he cried—which was often—he cried loudly and had the habit of opening his mouth and leaving it open for as much of the sound to come out as possible, a habit which accentuated the simian quality of his face, a quality he on occasion seemed to share with Joséphine. Austin had seen documentaries on TV that showed apes doing virtually the same thing while sitting in trees—always it seemed just as daylight was vanishing and another long, imponderable night was at hand. Possibly that was what Léo’s life was like. “It is because of my divorce from his father,” Joséphine had said matter-of-factly the one time Austin had been in her apartment, the time they had listened to jazz and he had sat and admired the golden sunlight on the building cornices. “It is too hard on him. He is a child. But.” She’d shrugged her shoulders and begun to think about something else.
Austin had seen no store selling flowers, so he crossed rue Regnard to a chic little shop that had wooden toys in its window: bright wood trucks of ingenious meticulous design, bright wood animals—ducks and rabbits and pigs in preposterous detail, even a French farmer wearing a red neckerchief and a black beret. An entire wooden farmhouse was painstakingly constructed with roof tiles, little dormer windows and Dutch doors, and cost a fortune—far more than he intended to pay. Kids were fine, but he’d never wanted any for himself, and neither had Barbara. It had been their first significant point of agreement when they were in college in the sixties—the first reason they’d found to think they might be made for each other. Years ago now, Austin thought— twenty-two. All of it past, out of reach.
The little shop, however, seemed to have plenty of nice things inside that Austin could afford—a wooden clock whose hands you moved yourself, wooden replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. There was a little wood pickaninny holding a tiny red-and-green wood watermelon and smiling with bright painted-white teeth. The little pickaninny reminded Austin of Léo—minus the smile—and he thought about buying it as a piece of Americana and taking it home to Barbara.
Inside, the saleslady seemed to think he would naturally want that and started to take it out of the case. But there was also a small wicker basket full of painted eggs on the countertop, each egg going for twenty francs, and Austin picked up one of those, a bright-green enamel and gold paisley one made of perfectly turned balsa that felt hollow. They were left over from Easter, Austin thought, and had probably been more expensive. There was no reason Léo should like a green wooden egg, of course. Except he liked it, and Joséphine would like it too. And once the child pushed it aside in favor of whatever he liked better, Joséphine could claim it and set it on her night table or on her desk at work, and think about who’d bought it.
Austin paid the clerk for the nubbly-sided little egg and started for the door—he was going to be late on account of being lost. But just as he reached the glass doo
r Joséphine’s husband came in, accompanied by a tall, beautiful, vivacious blond woman with a deep tan and thin, shining legs. The woman was wearing a short silver-colored dress that encased her hips in some kind of elastic fabric, and she looked, Austin thought, standing by in complete surprise, rich. Joséphine’s husband—short and bulgy, with his thick, dark Armenian-looking mustache and soft, swart skin— was at least a head shorter than the woman, and was dressed in an expensively shapeless black suit. They were talking in a language which sounded like German, and Bernard—the husband who had written the salacious novel about Joséphine and who provided her little money and his son precious little attention, and whom Joséphine was that very afternoon going off to secure a divorce from—Bernard was seemingly intent on buying a present in the store.
He glanced at Austin disapprovingly. His small, almost black eyes flickered with some vague recognition. Only there couldn’t be any recognition. Bernard knew nothing about him, and there was, in fact, nothing to know. Bernard had certainly never laid eyes on him. It was just the way he had of looking at a person, as though he had your number and didn’t much like you. Why, Austin wondered, would that be an attractive quality in a man? Suspicion. Disdain. A bullying nature. Why marry an asshole like that?
Austin had paused inside the shop door, and now found himself staring down into the display window from behind, studying the miniature Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. They were, he saw, parts of a whole little Paris made of wood, a kit a child could play with and arrange any way he saw fit. A wooden Notre Dame, a wooden Louvre, an Obélisque, a Centre Pompidou, even a little wooden Odéon, like the one a few steps down the street. The whole set of buildings was expensive as hell—nearly three thousand francs—but you could also buy the pieces separately. Austin thought about buying something to accompany the egg—give the egg to Joséphine and miniature building to Léo. He stood staring down at the little city in wood, beyond which out the window the real city of metal and stone went on unmindful.
