“I don’t know,” said Charles, confused. “I think that in these cases, the father … I mean, traditionally, the father….”
“Never mind,” said his wife. “We could, of course, both go.”
“Oh, no,” said Charles quickly. “The sight of us both …I mean, even if she hadn’t done anything, it might be overwhelming.”
“All right,” said Marian. She settled into her bed. “Well, good night again.”
“Is that all?” said Charles. He was surprised, and rather scandalized, that his wife could take it so calmly. He had known her to be greatly upset over much lesser things: a broken string of pearls, the accidental death of a cocker spaniel.
“What else can I say?” said Marian. “We can’t lie here and discuss her character and all her little ways. Evidently neither of us knows anything about them. We can talk about what lousy parents we are. That won’t help either. We might as well sleep, if we can.”
Marian was wonderful, he thought. He turned out the lights, leaving only the small spotlight over his bed and the light from the half-opened bathroom door. He undressed quietly. His father had liked Marian, he remembered. “If you marry your own kind of person, you know exactly where you’re at, every minute,” he had said, and he had been right. Charles and Marian had never had a full-dress quarrel. In this, Charles congratulated himself that he had made many allowances for her nerves and the strain of her profession. He looked around and, finding nothing he wanted to read, put out the light over his bed.
A moment later, in the dark, he heard his wife’s voice, so softly that he was not certain she had spoken at all.
“I said,” Marian repeated, “is he coming too?”
“Who?” said Charles, thinking, for a second, that she was talking in her sleep.
“The party of the second part,” said his wife. “Young Lochinvar. The boy with the good family and the good school.”
“No,” said Charles. “Why should he?”
“I thought not,” said Marian. “I suppose she went back to school all alone, too?”
“I suppose so,” said Charles, perplexed. “She cut her hair off,” he said, suddenly remembering this. “With a pair of nail scissors, I think.”
“Oh?” said Marian. “Well, that isn’t too serious. It’ll grow. I’ll show her how to fix it. That, at least, I can do for her.” Her voice dropped and he wondered if she could possibly be crying. She was silent and a few moments later she said quietly: “God, I don’t like them.”
“Who?” said Charles.
“Men,” his wife said. It was quite unlike Marian to be dramatic: he wondered if the shock of the news had unhinged her, and if she were planning to talk like this, off and on, all night.
“It’s the first inkling I’ve had that you hated men,” he said, smiling in the dark.
Marian stirred in her bed. “I don’t hate them,” she said. “If I hated men, I’d probably hate women, too. I don’t like them. It’s quite different.”
“I don’t see the difference,” said Charles, “but it doesn’t matter.” He sat up and switched on the light over his bed. His wife was crying. She had pulled the sheet up over her face and was drying her eyes on it.
“You mean,” said Charles, “that you hate men because of this boy, this….” He stopped, realizing he must not undersell his daughter.
“Weak, frightened, lying….” said Marian. “Thieves and rascals.” She sat up and, groping in the pocket of her dressing gown, found a handkerchief. “Thieves,” she said. She blew her nose. “And never any courage, not a scrap. They can’t own up. They can’t be trusted. They can’t face things. Not at that age. Not at any age.”
“I think it’s going a little far to say you can’t trust any man, at any age,” said Charles.
“I don’t know any,” said his wife.
“Well,” he said, “there’s me, for instance.” When she did not reply, he said: “Well, it’s a fine time to find out you don’t trust me.”
“The question isn’t whether I do or not,” said Marian. “I have to trust you. I mean, I either live with you, and keep the thing on the tracks, or I don’t. So then, of course, I have to trust you.”
“It’s not good enough,” said Charles. “You should trust me out of conviction, not because you think you have to.”
“All right,” said Marian.
“No,” he insisted. “It’s not good enough. Say you trust me.”
“All right,” said Marian. “I trust you. Don’t put the light out. I have to get some ice for my eyes. I’m working in the morning.”
“I’ll get it,” Charles said quickly, glad to end the conversation. One couldn’t blame her if she sounded a little unreasonable, he thought. It would be a shock for any mother. He put the ice cubes in a bowl and carried them back through the dark apartment to their bedroom.
Marian had stopped crying. “Put them in that gadget over there,” she said. “There, next to the lamp. That’s it.” She lay back again and Charles placed the mask of ice cubes across her eyes.
“You see,” he said, “men are some use. Shall I get you anything else?”
She shook her head, then she said: “You know who used to say that about men, ‘thieves and rascals’? My sister. You wouldn’t remember her. She didn’t come to our wedding. She didn’t want me to marry you. It broke her heart, I think. She went out to the West Coast, and she died before Joyce was born. I didn’t even know she was sick.”
“Don’t start crying about your sister, for God’s sake,” said Charles. “It’s awfully late, and if you have a job in the morning….” Vaguely, he did recall a sister: a scowling female form that had chaperoned his early meetings with Marian and then disappeared.
“She brought me up,” said Marian. “She thought I was so pretty. She used to wake me up in the morning, and say, ‘Little pretty one.’ She said it every day. Mother died…. And Father was pretty useless. She went everywhere with me. I was seventeen when I started modeling. Father was dead against it. We lived in New Canaan then.”
“Darling, I know all this,” said Charles. “I just happened to have forgotten about Margaret.”
“No, listen to this,” said Marian. “You can’t imagine what a beautiful kid I was. No, really you can’t. People used to stare at me on the street. I remember the men, mostly. They still look at me like that, like someone rubbing their dirty hands all over you. Only now it doesn’t frighten me. I was so beautiful that people hated me. Men hate beautiful girls, if they can’t have them.”
“I don’t know where you picked up that idea,” said Charles. “Everyone likes you. Everyone.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Marian. “My sister was with me all the time. She used to sit and read a book all the while I was working. The men were so scared of her that no one looked at me twice. I never minded. They did the best they could, though: a shove here, a little pat there. Then, the same year, when I was seventeen, I fell in love with a photographer. He was a Dane, or rather, his parents were. I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he was killed in the war.”
She was silent for several minutes, and Charles, reaching overhead, put out his light. Then she began again: “We started passing notes, right under Margaret’s nose, like a couple of school kids. I started coming in town without her, afternoons, saying I was shopping or something. I could only manage it afternoons, of course. So we decided to go away together. Up to then, it had all been pretty innocent. We were going to see if we liked each other – he told me that was how it was done in Europe, though I don’t think he’d ever been there – and then we’d get married. We didn’t run very far. We went to Philadelphia.”
“You’re making this up,” said Charles. “It doesn’t sound like you.”
“Why?” said Marian. “Because now I don’t run off to Philadelphia with photographers? I’m trying to tell you, I was seventeen.”
“Do you think that makes it better, or something?” said Charles. “A girl of seventeen … and I
met you a year later.”
“Well, it wasn’t too pleasant, if you’re looking for a moral,” his wife said. “In fact, I was so upset and frightened and unhappy that on the train when we were coming back to New York I said, ‘You needn’t look at me that way. It’s just as sinful for you as it is for me.’ He looked surprised, but he kept looking at me that funny way. Then he told me what they used to call me behind my back: this Lily Girl from New Canaan.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Charles.
“Margaret met me at the door, when I got out of the taxi,” said Marian. “My father was upstairs, collapsing, or writing me out of his will. She took me in her arms. She kissed me. She said, ‘Little pretty one.’ She looked around and she said, ‘No, I guess he didn’t come with you.’ She put me to bed. She brought me my dinner, on a tray. She brushed my hair, and she said, once, under her breath, ‘Thieves.’ She never mentioned it again. No, not once. Until I said I was going to marry you. Then she called you a thief and a rascal.”
“She didn’t even know me. Frankly, I think she sounds neurotic.”
“She was wonderful. And I wasn’t even there when she died.”
“I don’t see why you’re crying about it now,” said Charles. “If she died before Joyce was even born, that’s seventeen years. I wish you hadn’t told me all this. When I think that a while back you were saying men couldn’t be trusted. I’d certainly tell you…. I mean, if something had happened nearly twenty years ago, I’d certainly tell you about it. As if we weren’t upset enough about Joyce; or do you think this helps?”
“I’m sorry,” said Marian. “I keep thinking about Margaret, and saying ‘Thieves,’ and bringing my dinner, and dying all by herself. I get it all mixed up with Joyce, being all by herself right now. Joyce sort of looks like her, something about the way she stands, something sturdy. Put on your light, will you? I’ve lost my handkerchief.”
Charles looked at her critically. “You’ll never be able to work tomorrow,” he said. “Your eyelids are a mess.”
“I don’t care,” said Marian. “Only I don’t want to look too funny for Joyce. Oh, I want her hair to grow! Don’t you see her, being alone, and cutting it off? Her femininity, because she’s been made ashamed of it, or afraid?”
“Don’t start on that,” said Charles. “Don’t give her complexes she hasn’t got. It won’t mark her for life. It didn’t mark you. You made a happy marriage. And a career. Everyone respects you.”
“Oh, I’ll tell her about it,” said Marian. “I should have talked to her before, but she seemed such a kid. I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her how to live in the world with them as decently as one can.”
“With who?” said Charles.
“With all of you,” said his wife.
Charles turned off his light. “I don’t see where I come into this at all,” he said. He turned over to lie on his side, his sense of injury wrapped around him like an eiderdown. “Try to sleep,” he said. “From the sound of your voice, you’ve given yourself a cold.”
His wife did not reply. She was overwrought, Charles decided. As for her story, he scarcely knew whether to believe it or not. It’s so plainly out of character, he thought, recalling their blameless courtship. She was never that interested in men, and she thinks all photographers are morons. But then, he thought, she may have made it all up so that I wouldn’t be too hard on Joyce. He wanted to suggest this to Marian, but he was afraid of provoking another scene. He said, kindly: “Good night,” and his wife whispered something back.
At last he fell asleep, undisturbed, leaving his wife to think and to weep alone in the dark, under her mask of ice cubes.
MOUSSE
(1980)
ALL PARIS IS AWASH with election rumors concerning Sylvain Mousse. He has divested himself of his worldly goods, has dispersed his priceless collection of clawfoot and inlay, of marble and bullion, of statues of Diana the Huntress, of swan bathroom taps and sphinx floor lamps. Mousse intends to stand before the voters naked except for John Lobb shoes, Sulka socks, Hilditch & Key underwear, Rhodes & Brousse shirt, Charvet tie, Boucheron cufflinks, suit tailored by Creed, Chaumet watch, Mauboussin signet ring, Lanvin handkerchief, Hermès wallet, Motsch Fils umbrella, Schilz gloves, Willoughby hat.
Mousse hopes to win the hearts of the workers. Can he do it?
In a rare statement, the office manager of a respected underground newspaper declares, “Mousse is said to be living in dread of revelations allegedly in the files of this publication. The responsible revolutionary press has never stooped to personal criticism. A bourgeois biography, such as Mousse’s, inevitably contains chapters on armed assault, bigamy, arson, refusal of support to aged servants and illegitimate children, and unredeemable bankruptcy. Can you blame a Mousse for being a Mousse?”
In the world of the future will there be room for Mousse? Not if he is the same Sylvain Mousse last seen slinking to a bus stop after having been caught defacing valuable reproductions of the dinner menu at Maxim’s.
A photo of Mousse, snapped in a compromising situation with the wife of a distinguished Belgian billiards player, has been making the rounds of the media. In this coarse K.G.B. concoction Mousse is clearly recognizable, though his companion seems to be disguised as a blue hydrangea. The background, either the Royal Enclosure at Ascot or a radar traffic-control booth just outside Biarritz, leaves no room for doubt. A car with Caracas license plates recalls the oil barons of Venezuela. The picture is an obvious and mischievous fake, and it was with great reluctance that four reputable newspapers decided to run it.
Is Mousse still divisive? Once, his very name was enough to separate employers from secretaries, send embittered young idealists into investment careers, create punch-ups at Foreign Legion veterans’ get-togethers. A poll taken of Grenoble bus drivers showed they all believed Mousse to be the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
Actually, Mousse belongs to a prominent family of patriots and civil servants who continue to be useful to the nation as swimming instructors, veterinary surgeons, hatband cutters. Nine of his close relatives recently signed a manifesto disowning him. One sent him an insulting poem. In line with his new policy of self-denial, Mousse sent it back.
Not long ago, the curator of a world-renowned museum revealed that someone had carved “Vote for Mousse” in the frame of Delacroix’s “Liberty Guiding the People.” He said he had thought nothing of it at the time. Since then, he had been putting two and two together. Is Mousse a red herring thrown into the cultural soup? No one has a ready answer.
An editorial in a responsible ecological weekly, headed “WHAT’S IN CLEAN WATER FOR MOUSSE?,” has set some readers thinking. (Many of this journal’s subscribers say they take it only for the crossword puzzle.)
Mousse is sued for fraud by a noted art dealer, who bought a portrait from the Mousse collection in which he thought he could discern the haughty nose and frizzled wig of Louis xiv. Under merciless cross-examination, the dealer had to admit that Mousse never said the portrait was not a likeness of the Soviet Ambassador.
The philosopher Charles Filament, in his maiden speech before the French Academy, traces the decline of French influence to “Mousses and their kind.” On a holiday the previous summer M. Filament did not meet ten persons in Munich able to give him a direction in French. We have come a long way from Voltaire and Frederick the Great, he admitted. He was not asking for more Voltaire, God forbid, but for less Mousse.
Mousse has sold his mansion on Avenue Foch, together with some of its precious contents, to a cultivated Lebanese banker. Since then the deed of ownership has vanished from the banker’s safe-deposit vault. He has assembled a documented report on the matter, supplemented by taped interviews, affidavits, copies of bills of lading, and film footage showing stolen goods, under armed escort, being rushed past customs officials. He has shown the report to the appropriate authorities.
On Christmas Eve abundant snow is reported on the lower slopes of the Alps. Reserva
tions at ski resorts have achieved an all-time record. A last-minute train and airline strike prevents thousands of holiday-makers from leaving the capital. It begins to look as though Mousse may lose the election.
THIS MORNING, a small boxed personal notice in a morning newspaper catches the eye:
To Whom It May Concern
Sylvain Mousse would like his friends to know that he has taken his final vows with a contemplative order in which the rule of absolute silence is observed. Mousse has assumed the name, in religion, of “Brother Céphalopode,” for St. Céphalopode of Sinope, portrayed in Early Christian iconography with his finger to his lips. At his own request, he spent his novitiate in a monastery on the west coast of Scotland, where even if a word had been uttered he would have been at a loss to understand it.
He will remember you in his prayers.
Is it possible that all this time Mousse has been on the west coast of Scotland, eating herring and salt porridge, silently laughing at us?
TRAVELLERS MUST BE CONTENT
(1959)
DREAMS OF CHAOS WERE Wishart’s meat; he was proud of their diversity, and of his trick of emerging from mortal danger unscathed. The slightest change in pace provoked a nightmare, so that it was no surprise to him when, falling asleep in his compartment a few seconds before the train arrived at Cannes, he had a dream that lasted hours about a sinking ferryboat outside the harbor. Millions of limp victims bowled elegantly out of the waves, water draining from their skin and hair. There were a few survivors, but neither they nor the officials who had arrived in great haste knew what to do next. They milled about on the rocky shore looking unsteady and pale. Even the victims seemed more drunk than dead. Out of this deplorable confusion Wishart strode, suitably dressed in a bathing costume. He shook his head gravely, but without pity, and moved out and away. As usual, he had foreseen the disaster but failed to give warning. Explanations unrolled in his sleeping mind: “I never interfere. It was up to them to ask me. They knew I was there.” His triumph was only on a moral level. He had no physical vanity at all. He observed with detachment his drooping bathing trunks, his skinny legs, his white freckled hands, his brushed-out fringe of graying hair. None of it humbled him. His body had never given him much concern.
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