“You didn’t. I’ve been helping with the bookkeeping. And I don’t want to pretend I knew him very well either. But that’s what I’m supposed to do out there.” She turned her head toward the closed door, and beyond it the living room.
Philippe didn’t know what to say to any of that.
Louise sighed, and rolled the magazine into a tight cylinder. She was hoping Joseph would be better after they moved out, she confided. She’d been looking for an apartment she could afford on his allowance, although Joseph’s trustee considered it an unnecessary expenditure. Louise pursed her lips and knit her eyebrows, clearly imitating someone—the trustee, Philippe supposed—and said, in a hectoring voice, “Your father’s death just means there’s more room available at your stepmother’s. Two women each living alone is complete foolishness.” But Cannu wasn’t the one who had to live with Eugénie, Louise said, dropping the imitation. “Besides, I don’t want to sleep in any more rooms that people have died in.”
Philippe let that hang there, as if such a thing were possible. This was an old city, and the hospitals had only recently become places you might ever choose to go. Like those in Tarragona, the beds of Paris had been full of both the living and the dead for a very long time.
“I don’t want to live anywhere I had to watch it happen,” Louise amended, as if sensing his objection. “I’m done with that.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been cooped up here for months with Eugénie and Alfred and Joseph and I—” She cut off abruptly. “I’ve been cooped up.”
She put the rolled magazine up to her eye like a telescope and looked around the room: wallpaper patterned with vines, dark wood headboard, a bad painting of a little blond girl peering into a birdbath. Then she turned the telescope toward Philippe. He stood very still. He raised his hand and waved at her, as if she were a sailor and he was standing on the shore, signaling to the passing boats.
“Had life punched you in the nose yet?” she asked him. “The last time we met?”
“I’m not sure.” He thought about it, and Louise let him think, held him pinned in the dark circle of her paper telescope. She was no longer someone easily embarrassed, he realized. He’d been wrong to assume she was the girl he remembered. “I think I was still pretending not to feel it.”
She put the telescope down and nodded.
“You?” Philippe asked.
“Are we pretending that life punches you only once?”
“No. We don’t have to pretend that.”
She unrolled the magazine and smoothed it against her skirt. Before she could reply, the door flew open and Joseph ran in. Both of them jumped.
“He came!” Joseph said. “He came after all.”
Louise’s gaze jerked toward the open door and her face went white.
“I’m sorry to come so late. The trains were all delayed out of Cherbourg. Some fool jumped in front of one. And who is this?” The man’s narrow, sallow face pursed, and Philippe recognized how accurate Louise’s imitation had been.
“This is Philippe,” she said. “A friend of Erik’s.”
“Monsieur…Philippe?” Cannu asked, making it clear just how much he disapproved of not being given a proper, full name, and how appalled he was to find the two of them using first names behind a closed door.
At home that night Philippe kept thinking of Louise, and what exactly one should say to an unhappy eleven-year-old boy. What had he wanted someone to say to him? Was there some better path someone should have nudged him toward? He couldn’t think of one. He was glad he’d come to Paris, glad he had the life he did. Philippe wrote a short letter to Miguel, as he occasionally still did, sometimes with reply and sometimes without.
It had been more than a decade now since he’d sent him the book signed by Verlaine, something that had taken great effort to procure. He’d hoped that would count for more than it seemed to. He told himself it didn’t matter, that he hadn’t expected any particular reaction from Miguel, but Philippe still wished, of course, to be forgiven, to receive instead of a cryptic reply a long, chatty letter. What Miguel was up to, who he was with. Perhaps even a paean to what their friendship had once meant. None was forthcoming, and as the stretches of time lengthened between Philippe’s sporadic missives and Miguel’s even more sporadic answers, Philippe told himself that every letter would be his last. Then, months or even years later, he’d send another, reopening the silence between them as if pulling back the dressing on a wound that should have long since healed. He wasn’t sure why it kept itching, or why he kept scratching at it. Philippe had the odd feeling sometimes that he’d left a version of himself behind in Tarragona, and that someday some reply of Miguel’s might describe not only his own life, but that of this ghost self Philippe had abandoned.
Philippe had known Verlaine was notoriously prickly about his past, but he hadn’t thought that would extend to his books. He’d thought the man would be flattered to sign a volume. But it had taken a steady campaign of not just free drinks but gifts of opium and hashish to soften the poet’s mood. Then he softened all the way into maudlin stories about his doomed relationship with Arthur Rimbaud, still without signing.
Rumor had it that the younger man hadn’t written a word of poetry since Verlaine had shot him, had moved to Africa and started a coffee-export company instead. Verlaine started weeping, not over the ruin he’d made of his own life or his sins against his wife and child, but that there would be no more poetry in the world by Arthur Rimbaud, and what if that was his fault?
“You give yourself too much credit,” Philippe snapped in exasperation, the unsigned book still in his hands. He regretted this as soon as he’d said it, not because he thought it was untrue but because there was no one in the room who would take his side against Verlaine, and he was not keen to get head-butted again.
Verlaine was a neighborhood mascot, both for the poetry he’d written twenty years earlier and for not having written much since—he could be safely celebrated, no competition to anyone. He’d been appointed Prince of Poets in an only half-sarcastic neighborhood election. Philippe had placed twenty-third, and that was with Erik managing to cast fifteen separate ballots.
“But what if?” Verlaine moaned, eyes wide. “What if I—”
“Maybe he’d thank you,” Philippe said. “Maybe he’s happier. Maybe he’s grateful.”
“In Africa? Exporting coffee? I can’t believe it.”
“I can. Why not?”
“Maybe you can believe it, whoever the hell you are. But you are no Arthur Rimbaud.”
That was true, Philippe thought. That was perfectly true. He was a lot stupider, for one thing. Rimbaud had written his book, his one great book, and then gotten the hell out before he turned twenty-two.
Verlaine eventually, begrudgingly, signed the book: To you, whoever the hell you are. Philippe sent it with a note to Miguel saying this was the best he could do and never returned to the Café François I. He’d gone back to the Auberge, of course, plenty of times, and still showed up at the Chat Noir on occasion. His flight had been neither instantaneous nor total. But if he had to choose between Rimbaud’s terms of departure and Verlaine’s, he was picking Rimbaud’s. Even if that meant Rimbaud without a book, Rimbaud the forgettable, Rimbaud the vanishing. No one would have any idea who Philippe was after he died. Well, unless Erik somehow got stupendously famous after all. Then Philippe would be a footnote, the friend of his youth, some foreigner who sealed Uspud in a barrel full of nails and rained down bloody puppies. That was probably his best remaining shot. The odds seemed very long.
Now that Alfred was gone, Philippe reminded himself to check up on Erik more often than he would have otherwise. He thought of it as exactly that: checking up on, rather than checking in or having a drink or saying hello. He usually tried to catch Erik at some point on his journey north through the city to arrive in Montmartre by the time the evening shows started. When Vincent was touring, Erik still picked up substitute shifts, interrupting his commute with stop
s at various watering holes. If Philippe was free for lunch, he could catch Erik in Saint-Germain. If he couldn’t meet until after work, Erik could usually be found in Pigalle, at the base of the Butte, sparing Philippe the climb back up to their old haunts. Philippe aimed for lunch so he could at least be sure Erik was eating. Philippe always paid, and Erik never thanked him—now that Philippe had abdicated as his collaborator, Erik seemed to think he was entitled to Philippe’s patronage.
At a lunch one day in Saint-Germain, Philippe asked when Vincent was due back in town, trying to keep any trace of anticipation out of his voice.
“Not till next month. Which reminds me—would you come with me to this?” Erik shoved across the table an elegantly printed invitation to a piano recital. “I’ll need someone to elbow me if I start to laugh or fall asleep.”
Eugénie had rented a small recital hall for a Thursday-evening performance. “A recital of her pupils?” Philippe said. “Or…?”
“No, her. Solo. Like anyone cares to listen to her play.”
“If you don’t think you can stop yourself from being awful, you shouldn’t go.”
“I’m not actually going to laugh in her face. Do you really think you need to tell me not to?”
Philippe stuffed bread into his mouth and scraped his fork against the plate. “Will Louise be there?”
“I assume so. She and Joseph have moved out on their own, but they’re still in the neighborhood. Why?”
“No reason.”
The recital hall was open to the public, although Eugénie had explained that she didn’t expect anyone but friends and family and her music pupils and their families, and that was exactly who attended. She looked a little silly in her fancy evening gown, wearing cosmetics she had no real idea how to apply. But she played like a fury. Sweat stains bloomed under her arms, her chin wobbled, she was breathless when she finished the faster movements. Philippe was awestruck. No one played like this in the cabarets. He’d never heard Erik play like this, although he understood dimly that his friend could, or at least could have when he left the Conservatory. Had he kept it up? If there was a piano duel right now between Erik and his stepmother, who would win?
“She played well, didn’t she?” Conrad asked in the lobby afterward. With Mathilde out of town visiting relatives, he was unaccompanied.
Louise and Erik exchanged glances, trying to figure out how much the other was willing to admit. “She played accurately,” Erik allowed.
Eugénie, giddy in her sweaty gown, came over to them and they offered their congratulations. “All this time playing alone in the apartment, I thought I was just trying to fill up the quiet. But I realized I’d been practicing like mad. This has been so much fun. It’s just what I imagined.”
Even Louise smiled for her, but once she’d walked away, Erik stayed icy. “That’s pathetic. She shouldn’t be happy—she should be embarrassed at not wanting something more interesting.”
Eugénie was Conrad’s mother in every way but blood, and he stared at Erik, not in disapproval at his having said something inappropriate but in genuine anger. “Have you decided about the course?” he asked his brother, with an obviously false casualness.
“What course?” Louise asked.
“The composition course at the Schola Cantorum,” Conrad said.
Louise and Philippe looked at Erik inquiringly.
“Just something I’ve been considering,” he said.
“You’ll have to let us know this month,” Conrad said. An apartment with a second bedroom had opened up in their building and he and Mathilde were interested, but they needed to know first if they’d be lending Erik the tuition fees.
“Take the apartment,” Erik said. “It’s fine. I don’t need the money.”
“You’ve decided against the course?”
“You really want to have this conversation now?” Erik hissed. His face was blazingly red.
“We’re happy to lend the money, if you think you need the extra training. We just have to know sooner rather than later.”
“You’re making it sound remedial. If I was never trained in the first place, I can hardly need extra.”
“What do you need?” Philippe asked.
“You’ve seen me work,” Erik spat. “I need a lot of things.”
“Everything with Joseph’s trustee is like blood from a stone,” Louise said, “but I might be able to help. I can try.”
“Oh Lord. When I was composing for Sâr Péladan, not one of you gave a shit, but now that I might go back to school, you’re all lining up to help. You just like seeing me on my knees. You want me to crawl on my belly.”
“That’s not fair,” all three of them said, at slightly different times, in slightly different intonations, but with equal intensity.
“You know I’d be twice as old as everyone else? Twice as old exactly. I did the math.”
“That shouldn’t matter,” said Conrad the wunderkind, the youngest laboratory director ever at the parfumerie Maison Jeancard.
“It would matter to you,” Erik said. “You know it would.”
“Even so. That’s not enough of a reason not to do it,” Louise said.
“They’ll all recognize me. I’ve done just enough that every single person there will know exactly who I am and wonder what the hell I’m doing there.”
The same problematic level of fame that had plagued him ever since he’d played for Bruant, Philippe thought. Philippe had evaded it—despite his efforts to the contrary—his entire time in Paris, crouched behind a pen, or behind the scrim of a shadow play, or behind Erik. It had maddened him how invisible his slim successes had been, but now he was grateful that his failures were equally anonymous.
“Pretend it’s a joke,” Philippe said. “The siege of the Schola Cantorum. No one has to know you intend to learn anything.”
“The full course takes three years. I think someone will notice when I do the homework.”
“You doing homework?” Conrad said. “You must really be serious.”
“None of you are funny,” Erik said. “I’m the funny one.”
“You’ll be the odd, old, funny one at the Schola Cantorum,” Philippe said. “Schooling all the professors by the time you’re done. Imagine you’re playing a character.”
“You think I should do it?” Now it was a real question. Erik looked round at all three of them.
“If you think you’d benefit from it,” Louise said finally. “But you’re the only one who can answer that.”
“You’re all useless,” Erik said, but lightly, resignedly. The humiliated flush was fading from his cheeks.
Conrad looked appeased. There was a sound of guests starting to pop corks at a table Eugénie had laid with bottles and glasses for a champagne toast.
Erik darted away. “I’m going to fetch four glasses, but I wouldn’t count on any of them making it back over here.”
“The second bedroom—congratulations?” Louise asked.
“Not yet,” Conrad said. “But Mathilde wants everything ready.”
He and Louise started to discuss Joseph, and Philippe was stranded inside a personal conversation to which he had nothing to contribute but felt unable to leave without seeming uninterested in Louise’s woes. Joseph had been in such a poisonous mood that she’d left him at home, she explained, worried he might act out and ruin Eugénie’s evening. He was supposed to be catching up on homework, another source of strife.
“Cannu has him convinced that his school isn’t worth any effort, just because it’s public. Says he should enroll at some military academy in Cherbourg.”
“Maybe going away to school wouldn’t be the worst thing for him,” Conrad said carefully.
“I am not getting rid of my son.”
Conrad looked like there was more he might say, but chose silence. “I’ll see if I can net us some champagne, since Erik’s unlikely to come through.”
Once he was gone, Louise turned suddenly to Philippe. “Cannu is full of admonishm
ents about the two of us as well.”
There was an us that encompassed him and Louise? “This is only the third time I’ve ever seen you.”
“You’ve been counting?”
“Three isn’t a very difficult number to keep track of.”
She smiled. “Would you like it to be four?”
This was one of the most forward things any woman had ever said to Philippe, and that included prostitutes.
“I’ll make you dinner. I’ve been relearning how to cook, now that I’m on my own. Which perhaps doesn’t sound like much of an enticement, but I promise it’s all edible.”
“All right,” Philippe managed. “Do you mean—where do you mean?”
At her apartment, she said—where else? Tomorrow at eight. Joseph would be staying at a friend’s house.
Philippe played the conversation over and over in his head that night. Was there any way she’d really said what she seemed to be saying?
“What kind of ‘admonishments’?” he asked, almost as soon as Louise opened the front door. “You said Joseph’s trustee was admonishing you. About us.”
“It was nothing.” She guided him to one end of the sofa and poured them glasses of wine. He cataloged the smells coming from the kitchen. A roast? Potatoes? So maybe this really was just dinner? Could a divorcé and a widow have dinner alone in her apartment and have it still be respectable? He hadn’t thought Louise would think so, but he knew there wasn’t any particularly good reason why not.
The apartment was small—no separate dining room—and sparsely furnished, with a wildly out-of-scale equestrian painting on the wall opposite the window. The sofa was high-backed, ornamented with mahogany scrollwork, and extremely uncomfortable. He assumed both the painting and the couch were relics from Bellenau, whatever was left unsold after the estate had been liquidated. There was no piano, at least that he could see.
The Vexations Page 29
