Schmidt Steps Back

by Louis Begley

  At this moment you aren’t, he answered, but when you put your clothes on you will be the best-dressed woman there. Alice, how did this miracle happen?

  Because you got me tipsy.

  His happiness turned brusquely into fear.

  Is that what happened? Has this old goat taken advantage of you?

  You’re not an old goat, she replied. You’re very nice, and I like you. But I was very tipsy. It wouldn’t have happened if I had been sober. That’s what makes it so wrong. I wish none of this had happened, I wish you hadn’t come to see me.

  He didn’t point out that they had just made love again, after the effect of the cognac she had liked so much had surely worn off. Instead, barely able to speak, he called the restaurant and asked for a table and then waited while behind the closed door she took care of her toilette, and afterward while she dressed in the bedroom.

  When she had finished she asked whether he was going to put on his clothes. The tone of her voice, he noted, was strangely neutral, just a degree or two above cold. Yes, he said, I will get dressed right away. My shower can wait. When he came out of the bathroom, having urinated and washed his face and hands with cold water, he found her in the living room, leafing through a New Yorker he had bought the day before at WHSmith’s. Shall we go, he asked, his own voice hoarse. He took a sip of water from one of the glasses the waiter had disposed on the coffee table, trying to return to a manner of speaking as near as possible to what it had been when they met not so many hours ago—pleasant and courtly—and realizing that his success was far from complete.

  Will you be angry with me? was her answer. It’s so pleasant here and so quiet. Would it be possible to have dinner here? Something that’s easy to serve and won’t take long. I really hadn’t intended any of this.

  Certainly, he told her. To preserve his composure, he put a CD of Beethoven piano sonatas on the hotel record player, called the restaurant and canceled his reservation, and called room service and ordered a cold dinner with a bottle of a good Burgundy marked up by the hotel to a level that seemed to him unreasonable. Annoyance—with her and himself—that was what he felt. Why had she chosen to tell him Verplanck’s appalling story in such grisly detail? Indeed, why tell him the ghastly truth at all? She could have turned him off with white lies, something along the line of a long fight against a cancer that first made him feel unable to go on working and then killed him. Lots of people didn’t want it to be known that they had cancer of this or that. That sort of story would have been consistent with Tim’s wishes: hadn’t she said at some point that he specifically didn’t want anyone to know that he had AIDS? And afterward, why had she led him on? She was French, and old enough to know how much cognac she could drink, not some dodo from Dubuque! The more fool he, of course, not to have turned off that stream of true confessions, to have let her drink his brandy, and to have swallowed her bait. He too was old enough to know better and not to be faced with the annoyance, really reproaches, of a woman who had led him on, rather than vice versa. In fact, the last time he’d made a fool of himself this way was as a newly hatched partner interviewing law students out on the coast, when he let an applicant draw him into smoking pot and wrestled with her half naked on a futon! But for God’s sake, that was more than twenty-five years ago, and the woman wasn’t the widow of one of his junior partners!

  Now all that was left to them was to chew their fingernails waiting for room service. There was no telling when the order would appear. The amount of time it took one of those goddamn Arabs or Portuguese in the pantry to cut four—or would it be six?—slices of cold roast beef, put them on the plate, slap on some salad and cornichons, and extract the bottle of wine from the temperature-controlled closet was indecent. Or was wine kept down in the cellar? In that case, he had made a fatal mistake when he ordered a good wine! Add to that the time it would take the waiter to waddle from the pantry to his room. Rats! His annoyance was at the point of turning into cold fury. What business had she changing her mind about where they ate? There was gin and vermouth in the minibar, as well as splits of champagne. He offered her the choice, and heard her refuse both with the simpering grace of a senior from Miss Porter’s responding to an indecent proposal. Tant pis, tough luck, kiddo! He made himself a martini as solid as the Crillon, gave her the Perrier she’d asked for as an afterthought, put a jar of macadamia nuts on the coffee table between them, and lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair. Legs crossed, an expression that his darling daughter referred to as “Schmidt the Hun” on his face—my goodness, where would she have gotten that sweet idea, could it have been from her adorable mother-in-law?—he applied himself to the martini and the nuts.

  His reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door followed by the waiter wheeling in the table. At last they could eat. He tasted the wine. It was overpriced but better than he remembered. With grim satisfaction he noted that Alice hadn’t stopped the waiter from filling her glass. Thank you, he told the waiter, you needn’t wait. We will help ourselves, and I will call when it’s time to remove the table. Turning to Alice, his spirits revived by the martini and the wine, he said, Alone at last!

  I’m glad you’re feeling better, she replied.

  I’m not. I’m confused and angry at myself, he told her. I don’t like to think that I took advantage of you. The truth is that you’ve overwhelmed me. I was totally sincere when I told you I was falling in love. In fact, I did fall in love. Senile puppy love! You can call me stupid, hotheaded, unrealistic, and anything else you like, but that’s what happened. I listened to your story, which is sadder than anything I might have been able to imagine. Was I wrong to want to hear it? I did let you drink my cognac—emphasis on I “let you,” I certainly didn’t ply you with it—and I have offered you my affection and admiration at a moment when you are vulnerable. Was that unfair? What am I to do now? For my part, I can’t say that I wish that what happened had never taken place. Making love to you was a miracle. It put me at the pinnacle of happiness.

  I liked it too, she said. Very much.

  Then don’t make me feel I’ve wronged you. Don’t say again the things you’ve said just minutes ago. I can’t help taking them very hard. They hurt! You may have a thousand reasons against allowing me to love you. My age is surely at the top of the list, but I am in very good health, and if, by another miracle, you had wanted me to, I would have done everything within a man’s power to give you a good life.

  Schmidtie, she said, your age doesn’t scare me, and I think I would have gone to bed with you even if I had been sober, although probably not quite so fast. But don’t talk about marriage, permanence, the future. Not now, not yet. That’s plain silly. Let’s take things as they come, one by one.

  There must be something seriously the matter with me, Schmidt said to himself. In substance, this could have been his beautiful twenty-one-year-old Carrie telling him to cool it after one of his repeated offers of marriage. There, of course, the difference in age was huge: more than forty years and, even more important to Carrie, he was convinced, was the difference of class. That child of the American dream could not get over the barrier between a Puerto Rican waitress and an elderly WASP millionaire. Carrie, with her astonishing sense of caste, the beauty of a swan, innate exquisite manners, and sensitivity of a princess! But by the time he had made those speeches, Carrie and he were living together. Alice and he hardly knew each other!

  Guide me, Alice, he said. Take as a given that I’ve fallen in love with you. Tell me how I can become yours and make you mine.

  One way, she answered, is not to protest if I go home after I finish my coffee, and no, she added, you needn’t take me home. The hall porter will get me a taxi. Or perhaps I’ll walk—to cool my head.

  And tomorrow? he asked. Can we have lunch or dinner or both? I’m not sure I’ve told you that I must go to New York the next day. Mr. Mansour calls. I must attend a meeting of the foundation’s board of directors.

  Schmidtie, she laughed, I too have a job,
didn’t you know? I have to be at the office tomorrow.

  He hadn’t known.

  There is no reason that you should know.

  The business lunch, she told him, was with a German author. She was an editor at a French publishing house, Alice explained quickly, her specialty being the German contemporary novel. Going to school in Bonn had made her completely comfortable in that language and in general had given her a leg up in French publishing. There was a great interest in German novelists and few editors with equal knowledge of German and bilingual in French and English. Perhaps there were none at all. But she could have dinner with him, at her place.

  Then she stood up and, smiling gaily, offered him her mouth. À demain, she said—at eight!

  VI

  IT WAS Madame Laure’s day off, he learned. She spent Sunday afternoons and evenings as well as Mondays with her married daughter living in Courbevoie, a short distance from Paris, and returned to work early on Tuesday.

  I’ve resisted the temptation to give you cold roast beef or cold chicken, Alice added, offering him a drink. Do you like cheese soufflé? You had better say you do, because that’s what you’re having.

  He was seeing a different Alice, he thought, relaxed and cheerful—as cheerful as she had seemed when she kissed him leaving his hotel suite—and proud of her accomplishments in the kitchen. The wine she poured seemed if anything better than the wine he had chosen when they ordered from room service, but a Bordeaux, so that the comparison was of doubtful validity. Poor Tim’s cellar, he thought, but she told him that particular bottle was her father’s. He had laid down a great deal of wine and had given her half of his cellar when he sold the apartment on rue du Bac. But Tim balked at drinking my father’s wine, she said, and had to be forced to let me serve even vintages that couldn’t wait. He actually told me I should sell my wine. He was buying, and laying down, more than enough. That actually began as soon as we moved to Paris, before my father found out he was gay, but still I think it was probably his feelings of guilt. There were other ideas he had with the common theme that he didn’t want to take anything from me that I can’t explain otherwise. For instance the way he would sulk when I gave him a present that cost more than the price of a book or a necktie. His presents to me were extravagant. And very beautiful. For instance look at this bracelet!

  The bracelet on her wrist looked like black lace.

  It’s iron, she said, Berlin Iron Work, made in the first decade of the nineteenth century. They’re rare pieces, but Tim gave me several of them, whenever he found one. It wasn’t a lie that he loved me; he was telling the truth. If only I had been able to turn myself into a man—what am I saying?—if I had been born a man!

  I like you better this way, said Schmidt, horrified by his own stupidity as soon as the words left his mouth.

  After dinner they moved to the library, Alice having rejected his offer to help with the dishes. We’ll let Madame Laure clean up, she told him. Don’t look so shocked. It would be different if I had a dog or a cat, but I don’t, and she doesn’t mind doing it. She comes back from her daughter’s so early that she has plenty of time for it. But I was going to tell you about my job.

  She had sat down on the sofa and motioned for him to take the armchair catty-corner to it.

  Alice, he interrupted, I wish you would explain first how you and Tim lived together, or you, Tim, and Bruno, once you knew. Did Tim come home to dinner? Did you speak to each other? Did you entertain—I mean did you for instance invite guests to dinner? Suppose I had turned up. What would have happened?

  Schmidtie, don’t be silly. Everything went on as previously, except that I didn’t sleep with Tim, and there was nothing other than kiss kiss on both cheeks when called for. If you had come to Paris, Tim would have invited you to dinner, and unless you had said that you particularly wanted to see us alone we would have also asked other people—from the office or perhaps the embassy. He would have decanted his best wine and made sure that I had ordered the best smoked salmon from Petrossian. Really, our arrangement was corrosive but not that unusual or unpleasant in a day-to-day sense. Don’t forget those wonderful manners of Tim’s. Bruno had them too, and he was more charming than any man I have known except my father. But he is almost as charming. There are many married couples living together very comme il faut, with the understanding that the husband or the wife or both have their sex elsewhere. Tim’s being gay gave it the only touch of originality. No, I’m not turning a catastrophe into a joke, she added, seeing the pained look on his face, I’m trying to give you a clear picture.

  Thank you, Schmidt replied, thank you, I do realize that such marriages exist.

  But you don’t like them, and knowing that they exist makes you unhappy, she chimed in. Let me cheer you up. I’ll tell you about my job, which got me through the worst period. It let me keep my sanity. I was very lucky to find one at all, and so soon after that summer. It gave me a reason to get out of the house and go to the office. To be with other people. It’s hard to describe how much it meant to me. For the first six months I was part-time, but I’ve been full-time ever since. And it was all right with Tommy; he urged me to do it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken the job. He didn’t get home much before me, so it was possible for me to be there most evenings to help with his homework—and just to be there. Of course, I couldn’t help with the math or even supervise, and Tim couldn’t either, but Tommy needed no help!

  I do understand, Alice, he told her, truly I do. Apropos of work, I’m not sure I’ve told you that my plane leaves tomorrow late enough in the afternoon for us to have lunch. Would you like that? I was sorry not to have had lunch with you today.

  I would love it, she replied, but I can’t. Tomorrow I’m having lunch with my colleague who looks after contemporary American and English literature. He’s more than a colleague: he got me hired! They would never have taken me if he hadn’t made them. I had no work experience in publishing; in fact I had never had a real job! But he had faith in me. By the way, he went to Harvard, and he thinks he knows you. I mentioned your name today. He is Serge Popov, she said smiling.

  Serge Popov! The name surfaced from the depths of time like the monster rising from Loch Ness. Yes, he remembered Popov, and remembered disliking him. Oh really, he answered.

  A cloud must have passed over his face because she smiled again, this time at him, and said, Don’t be like that, Schmidtie, I can’t change my lunch date. Serge and I aren’t having lunch alone, we’re having lunch with our boss. It’s important. Now stop pouting, and come here—she patted a place beside her on the sofa—and seduce me.

  He limped back to the hotel through deserted streets, at the corner of rue Cambon refusing the services of a professional with spiky hair dyed green who offered them at half price in view of the lateness of the hour. Seduction indeed! But who had been the seducer? The awkward and rough-hewn stranger with the beginnings of white stubble on his cheeks or she, who had taken him into her bed and lavished on him such tenderness? From what well did she draw it? Were there words and gestures she had withheld, ones that she would bestow only on a man she loved, treasures that perhaps—no, surely—only Tim had known? In their writhing and caresses, had it been Tim she had sought, Tim such as he had seemed to be when he first introduced her to Schmidt? He did not think he would ever learn the answers to his questions even if they existed. She had accompanied him to the door and, in their last embrace, her bare arms around his neck, her naked body burning through his clothes, had murmured, Yes, that would be very nice, when he told her he would return soon. I will, I promise, he whispered. He would keep the promise. He was certain that, however extraordinary it might seem, he really loved her—the childish phrase pressed itself on him—for keeps.

  VII

  THE OKLAHOMA CITY Federal Building had been bombed earlier in the morning. According to CBS, there were at least thirty-one dead, twelve of them children in the second-story child care center; scores were missing, possibly buried in the rubble. I
n the pandemonium, no one dared speculate how many of the missing might be dead or alive. But the world turns, and board meetings held in buildings left standing and unharmed must go on, so that no one was surprised when at twelve sharp Mr. Mansour called the meeting of his foundation’s directors to order. At his suggestion, however, the proceedings were suspended for thirty minutes after the sandwich lunch, and before Mr. Albert Schmidt’s report, during which pause the group watched the one o’clock news on CNN, wordless and transfixed by the horror of the images. No sooner had the TV been turned off, however, than a red-faced man Schmidt didn’t know piped up, saying that he could see the hand of Muslim terrorists in the attack, and brought upon himself Mr. Mansour’s reproof. The great financier, having been born in Egypt, and having spent his childhood and first years of adolescence in that country and in Morocco, naturally considered himself an expert on all matters touching the Middle East. The question is, he told the unfortunate speaker, producing in his right hand, as though by magic, ivory worry beads that immediately began a clickety-clack staccato, the question is what you would say if El-Ahram tomorrow prints a story saying it sees the hand of Jews in this attack, you know, Jews trying to pin the attack on Arabs. You’ll say it’s nonsense. The same nonsense as what you said just now. You should be ashamed of jumping to such conclusions and speaking when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Having stood up to make his presentation, Schmidt sat down, expecting the chastised director to leave the room or perhaps even resign. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, he heard Mr. Mansour calling on him to proceed with the report that they had all been waiting for.

  It seemed to Schmidt after he had finished that he had been droning on far longer than was appropriate and had lost his audience. Evidently, it wasn’t so. The best thing that ever happened to you, Mr. Mansour told him when the meeting broke up, the very best thing that ever happened to you was getting a chance to hang out with me. You’ve gotten smart. Almost like a Jew.