Chapter Twenty-Two
So according to your Steiner, we alone are responsible for what happens to us?” Josephine asked while leaning in as though to confide in me.
“Insofar as we choose beforehand to live all that we live, yes.”
“And do you believe that?”
“No, and he’s not my Steiner, although I do believe that to a large extent we are capable of directing our existence.”
“I have trouble believing that the people who live the dramatic events that are reported in the news every day have chosen those destinies before they arrive on the planet!”
“And yet that’s what Steiner would say.”
“There’s a sort of megalomaniac side to his way of thinking. But on second thought, that might be the only aspect of all this that pleases me, the idea that I’m not the victim of anything, that I’ve decided everything.”
She took a sip of her green tea and stared out into space.
“So chance doesn’t exist?”
“According to him, no it doesn’t.”
“So if the two of us met, it’s because we decided to on some level? What if I had wanted to meet you, but you didn’t, or the reverse? What’s he say about that, your Steiner?”
“Oh, Josephine, you’re wearing me out! Ask Luna. Really I don’t know that much about him. Can we change the subject? I really would like to talk to you about something else.”
“Go right ahead.”
“Okay, but I don’t know how to say this without putting you in an embarrassing situation.”
“Don’t worry, Christiane, I can defend myself, you know.”
“Against adversity, certainly, but maybe not against friendship.”
“And why should I have to defend myself against friendship?”
“Because I’m alone and old and intrusive.”
“You’re no longer that young, but otherwise I don’t agree with you. You’re neither alone nor intrusive. What do you want to ask me?”
“What are you doing this summer?”
“I’m on vacation until mid-August and then I’m working.”
“And do you have any plans?”
“What could I have for plans? Maybe a few days with Mita, but not long, we can’t really afford much.”
“I’d like to spend a few days in Brittany with you.”
“With me?”
“Yes.”
“My dear Christiane, I don’t have the money for that.”
“But I do.”
“But you’re you.”
“It would be my treat, of course.”
“No, that’s not possible!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like being in debt to others, not even to people I like.”
“You’d be depriving me of a lot of happiness for nothing, Josephine.”
“It’s not nothing. Do you know what it means to be linked by indebtedness to someone? It would disfigure everything between us. I wouldn’t be my natural self, instead I’d be constantly thinking about how I’m taking a fancy vacation thanks to you; and you, you’d soon be treating me as your lady in waiting.”
“Josephine, what if we prove to each other that we’re better than those clichés?”
“But no one’s better than them, Christiane! To me, you’re a true friend. I don’t want to risk messing everything up for the sake of a week at the seaside, do you understand?”
“It’s crazy though to deprive ourselves of a wonderful moment together on account of money problems that don’t even exist.”
“They don’t exist for you, Christiane, and so lucky you, but for me it’s a very different matter.”
“I don’t want that to be the case.”
“Well, you’ll have to ask your Steiner to ship you off to another planet. Here money decides everything — everything except friendship.”
“So shall I stay in Paris with you?”
“Yes, and I’ll invite you out to dinner at an African restaurant in the rue Lepic.”
“And I’ll invite you to the theater one evening.”
“Deal!”
“That is unless the sound of the sea…the gulls…eating oysters at sunset…”
“It’s not nice what you’re doing, you know.”
“But it would be so simple if you would just be a little more trusting, Josephine.”
“No, Christiane. No means no.”
Luckily things worked out all on their own because I needed a car to get to Saint-Briac in early August and Josephine volunteered to drive me there. That’s how, little by little, I managed to lure her to Brittany. One of her friends loaned her an old Renault. With some effort I let her pay for the gas and some provisions without saying a word. Josephine was the kindest and most cheerful person imaginable, but she knew how to command respect and so I behaved myself.
“I thank you for existing, Josephine. Without you I would be alone and more susceptible to bouts of melancholy. You see, this beach is so nice in the evening around seven, but really unbearable during the day. When Catherine was little it was different. We would always set up here, right where we are now, but there wasn’t this crowd of people all around. I don’t know where they’ve all come from these past few years.”
“Is your daughter doing better?”
“I hope so. It really breaks my heart to see her suffer.”
“Maybe you should have stayed there with her.”
“Certainly not.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Yes.”
“Myself, I don’t think I regret not having children.”
“But you still can.”
“Technically speaking yes, but it’s still awfully late. I’m forty-three. Plus, I’m not interested in finding a mate.”
“No one? As beautiful as you are?”
“That has nothing to do with it!”
“What about uncomplicated dating or adventures?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh don’t play the innocent! You know very well what I mean!”
“Frankly, that doesn’t interest me at all at the moment. And you?”
“We can stop there. I dislike this sort of discussion.”
“But Christiane, you’re the one who started it!”
“Yes, but let’s stop anyway, okay?”
“Oh, so when it’s about you we can ‘stop there,’ but if it’s about my private life it’s okay for you to know everything?”
“I’m old. It’s terrible an old woman talking about love.”
“Really, old girl, sometimes you say the stupidest things.”
A silence followed. Josephine got up to go in the water.
I watched her come back, her sculpted ebony body, the sparkling ocean water dripping off her under the red late afternoon sun. I asked her how she managed being on her own.
“Do you mean having no family?”
“Yes, but not just that.”
“I lost my love, Christiane. And you, how do you do it? You seem to manage pretty well too. We simply have no other choice.”
“True, but I always have the feeling that a piece of me is floating somewhere else in the universe, or in some other time. I never manage to be here, now.”
“With me it’s more like a hole in my stomach. I can get nourishment from everything I encounter, but still there’s this hole here.” She pointed to a spot at the level of her sternum. “But we should keep in mind that despite all, we’ve triumphed.”
“Over what?”
“Over the general ugliness. Human dramas have not succeeded in crushing us. Were you loved?”
“Yes, by men and by my brother maybe. By my parents, I don’t know.”
“Oh, your Papyrus, he adored you before he started taking drugs!”
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“Yes, that’s true.”
“And your mother, a saint like that, of course she loved you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, in any case, I like you a lot.”
“I know, and I feel the same about you. In fact, we could say that at this point in our lives when we miss everything that we really don’t lack for anything.”
“Oh yes, there is something that we cruelly lack!”
“Please, don’t say anything sad!”
“No, it’s a lack that we can easily remedy!”
“What?”
“A large plate of shellfish and a cold bottle of dry white wine!”
Yes, Josephine had that admirable character trait — she adored seafood.
Luna and Josephine offered me the feeling of intimate closeness that old people generally have to do without. The swallowing up of our worlds calls forth the specter of death, but some invincible resistance comes with their presence. Maybe it’s because they love making me talk about my past. What began as Luna’s intellectual interest in Rudolf Steiner gradually became a sort of archeological exploration of her roots. Was she hoping her ancestors would unlock the great mystery of her existence? Was she looking to find some map or key to her fate through my life story? When she asked for the third time, “Why do you say Bette saved your life?” was she looking for the origin of her own life?
Whatever the case may be, here’s how Bette saved my life.
Chapter Twenty-Three
At the end of the war I was already going to high school and living with my grandmother Éléonore — a severe, gruff woman who reprimanded us constantly. Gabriel wanted to attend Saint-Cyr and was becoming quite a good student. My dream, after graduating from high school, was to go to university to study philosophy — but my mother and grandmother considered that not at all proper. Completing high school and obtaining my baccalaureate was already for me a major triumph, since both of them had done all they could to divert me toward embroidery and similar activities at a horrendous school that trained girls to become perfect little homemakers. Their insistence was directly proportional to their displeasure with my behavior, which for them lacked femininity. Despite what they believed, however, I had a lot of success among the boys of my age.
Aunt Bette was very useful in these negotiations, even though Grandma Éléonore felt complete contempt for her.
“That Bette,” she’d say, her mouth full of disgust, “does not inspire the least confidence. A total Jezebel — or Salomé! I’ve heard she did obscene dances covered in veils! To think that she managed to marry my Enguerrand and that imbecile Geoffroy to boot!”
My mother, on the other hand, maintained a certain admiration mixed with jealousy for her, and so when Bette praised the advantages of culture and education for a young woman who could no longer count on the material support of a father, she kept her mouth shut. Bette’s argument was strengthened by the undeniably impoverished state of things at the château. Mother did not know how to manage the farmhands who worked the land and many of the young men wanted to leave and work in cities. She was therefore forced to let Jeanne go along with the other servants, and eventually ended up living at her mother’s place too. The château fell into a sad decline.
For my mother and grandmother, sudden humiliation gradually replaced the pain of loss. My mother had been sincerely in love with my father — that’s something I’ve never doubted for a second. The people we socialized with, notre milieu, as my mother called them, formed an impregnable wall between us and the rest of the world. But that same milieu was unable to pardon a family scandal like ours. In truth, they spoke of nothing else, and they should have been grateful to us for finally shaking up the comforter that lay over the flat surface of their lives, but that would not have been compatible with the true benefit that our family drama offered them. The saga gave them endless opportunities to feel superior and point accusing, judging index fingers at us. There were a few generous souls among them who managed to sigh, “Ah, the poor children!” — but it only took the slightest gaffe or misstep, usually on Gabriel’s part, for the entire clique to declare scornfully, “He’s just like his father!” For them, in other words, shame was genetically transmitted and therefore we were in a way guilty from birth because we were the offspring of a scoundrel.
I had a few friends, but I sensed that I was being treated with aloof curiosity and that irritated me. The only people I really got along with still were my cousins, and so Gabriel and I would spend time at their houses whenever we had the chance.
Gabriel enrolled at Saint-Cyr and I lived at home with my mother and grandmother. I became a good student and built friendships with some of my teachers, especially Abbé Neveu, who taught me philosophy. He was extraordinarily intelligent and open to existential questions. He also took a liking to me. He had a good sense of humor and was immeasurably kind. I remember him lifting his cassock to kick a ball around with us in the playground, and also listening to my confessions while seated together on the steps of the church. Our time there never ended with a list of prayers to recite but instead with a long discussion about man’s existence and free will.
My grandmother was subject to all forms of paranoia after Papyrus left us. The Duchesse d’Avoiseul had not greeted her at the end of mass, Baroness Mully had not invited her to her Christmas concert for the first time in her life, Countess Poiteau gave her an odd smile when she met her at a tea hosted by her cousin the Countess de Vilancourt. With my mother this same anxiety transferred itself onto us.
“I beg you, Christiane, to pay close attention to your personal conduct. It’s going to be very difficult to find you a husband. So please do everything you can to avoid being repulsive.”
“What do you mean repulsive? I’ve received a lot of attention!”
“That’s all we need — for you to be known as an easy girl! Really, that’s all we need! Be mindful not to do anything that could be misinterpreted.”
“So am I to push boys away or not?”
“Oh, when you pretend you don’t get my meaning you are really a pain in the neck!”
One afternoon in March while walking in the streets of Amiens with my mother, I was whistled at by a group of boys who were smoking a cigarette as they watched girls go by. It was a magnificently sunny day on the front edge of spring — the season that boys of that age know belongs to them. I pretended not to notice and looked straight ahead, but it was not enough. My mother stopped in her tracks and said to me, “You cross the street this instant and tell those young men, ‘Gentlemen, I am not the person you take me for.’”
“No way, I will not!”
“Christiane! Do you think it’s acceptable for it to be said that you’re an easy girl?”
“But I’ve not done anything! Let’s go home. We’re making a spectacle of ourselves.”
“Well, if you won’t, I will!”
And so she crossed the street and said what she had to say, while I, red with shame, ran home without waiting for her. When she arrived, her face was lit up with victorious satisfaction. I was determined more than ever to study philosophy in Paris and live at the home of Cousin Vincent’s mother, who most certainly would not have exposed me to that kind of humiliation.
When I related such episodes to Gabriel he invariably told me not to get upset and just to accept things without paying so much attention to them. “It’s their generation, what do you expect!” was a common refrain.
The Duc d’Avoiseul reigned supreme over our little world of aristocratic rurality. He possessed a large château, a solid, well-documented family tree going back at least five centuries, lots of land, and therefore lots of money. Having lost his wife, with whom he had no children, he had been living in his château with his mother since the age of thirty. Everyone praised this admirable faithfulness to the deceased Duchess.
During the events that I’m about
to describe, the Duke was about forty, balding, and showing early signs of a potbelly; but he was still the dream of every well-born young woman in the area. He hosted a ball that my grandmother did everything in her power to get us invited to. Gabriel, who was on leave in Amiens, was to accompany us. I found the idea amusing because my cousins and brother would be there, but otherwise I was completely uninterested in such distractions. Besides, I was always poorly dressed since we had no money, and my mother and grandmother were constantly criticizing me as too much this or that, or not enough this or that. They forced me to try on an old dress of my mother’s that was totally outmoded but that they both declared to be “wonderfully chic!” I was therefore in a very bad mood in the car that brought us to the ball.
“Try to smile, Christiane! Do you realize what it means for you to be invited to the Avoiseuls’? It’s a detail that could very well change the attitude that people have toward us and remind them that I am a direct descendant of the Stuarts, and that your grandfather, my deceased husband, was the Count of Louvenciel! The effrontery of your father was a strike against one of the oldest families of France. I am pleased to see that the Duchess has not forgotten our ancestry.”
The women in my family were capable in this way of ascending rapidly from a cellar of shame to summits of arrogance.
“Of course, Grandma,” I replied distractedly.
Gabriel gave me an arch look to let me know he approved of my bland reaction and then proceeded to imitate the strange hiccup noise that our grandmother always made. His little comedy made me laugh uncontrollably.
“I don’t see what’s so funny about descending from a family that participated in the Crusades with Saint Louis!”
“I’m not laughing about that, Grandma.”
Gabriel continued to hiccup and move his chin like a turkey, which was our grandmother’s habit. She couldn’t see him from where she was sitting next to my mother in the backseat. My laughing became even louder.
“Well, if you find that funny, perhaps you’re not ready to be in the Duchesse d’Avoiseul’s salons!”
Gabriel kept on with his hiccuping and head bobbing, and I continued laughing uproariously. Mother scolded us but was powerless to stop us.
The Devil's Reward Page 17
