Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘I would like a chocolate ice’, she announced, once more a child. ‘A very large one.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jacob hailed the waiter. He wondered about the hint of an accent he couldn’t trace in her voice.

  No sooner had he placed her order, than she said, ‘I am not a wood nymph at all you know. I don’t like the woods. I like cities, big cities, especially at night. What I hate most of all are convents.’ She shivered. ‘They only let me out for my music.’ She reached down for the large school satchel she had been carrying, opened it and took out a sheaf of music books. ‘Here, this is what I like.’ She flung aside a volume of Chopin, another of Liszt, and at last proffered some unbound sheets. ‘Gershwin. Rhapsody in Blue.’ She began to mimic the piano’s deep percussive sounds. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Mmm. Very much.’ Again Jacob found his intelligence deserting him.

  ‘I should like to hear you play,’ he said.

  She considered him. ‘What do you do?’ she asked

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ Jacob answered, deliberately not specifying.

  She looked at him quizzically, then flinging back her long slender neck she laughed uproariously. ‘A doctor eating stolen apples,’ the thought filled her with evident glee. Then she stopped, suddenly serious. ‘You’re very handsome for a doctor,’ she said.

  Jacob was in turn embarrassed and elated. Young women in his circle didn’t speak this way, act this way. A clear breath of freedom encircled him as he looked at her wide-eyed face, the way she spooned the ice-cream lavishly into her mouth.

  Then abruptly, with a touch of coltish clumsiness, she stood up. ‘I’m off,’ she said, and without turning back to say goodbye, she was.

  ‘Wait,’ Jacob called after her. ‘I don’t even know your name.’ His voice trailed off as the people at the table next to him paused in their conversation to watch the scene.

  Frustrated, Jacob turned to order another Pernod. It was only when the waiter placed the colourless liquid on the table and paused to pour the water which turned it thickly yellow, that Jacob noticed a large square card on the table. He picked it up, turned it over and read: Les soeurs de Sainte Ange vous invitent à un concert… The date of the concert was two weeks away. Amidst the names of the performers he noticed Sylvie Kowalska. Polish, yes, that would account for the accent, the blond chiselled features.

  Reflectively Jacob sipped his bittersweet drink. Had the enthralling Sylvie Kowalska left the card there deliberately, as an invitation to him. Or was it an oversight? Whatever the case, he would go. Of course, he would go.

  The intervening weeks passed all too slowly for Jacob Jardine. He was by nature not a man cut out for waiting. His impatience was as proverbial among his friends as his patience was lauded by his professional colleagues. When Sophie didn’t turn up at the Dôme, as he had hoped she might on the following Saturday, he decided to act. Amongst his acquaintance, he had remembered a woman with Polish connections. Promptly he went to see her.

  Madame Eugènie de Troye (née Sokorska) was all too pleased to receive the young Dr. Jardine, despite the unexpectedness of his visit. He had once graced one of her receptions in the company of Princesse Mathilde and any friend of the Princesse’s was a most welcome guest, as she was quick to make clear to her gathered visitors when Jacob made his entry.

  ‘And how is Princesse Mathilde,’ Eugènie de Troye asked as soon as a dainty black-skirted maid had placed a delicate cup of China tea in Jacob’s hand.

  ‘Very well, I believe,’ Jacob answered casually. ‘She’s in Scotland at the moment.’ He looked round the room’s gilded columns, the heavy Empire furniture; he refused to be drawn. ‘And you? I believe you spent some time this summer near Montpelier. My mother mentioned to me that she had bumped into you at the Beauchamps’.’ This piece of useless information from his mother’s round-up of local gossip had just crystallized itself adroitly in Jacob’s mind.

  ‘Ah yes, your mother,’ Eugènie de Troye had forgotten the incident. But she noted the connection, noted too the way Jacob had skillfully diverted the conversation from Princesse Mathilde. She had often wondered about the nature of the Princesse’s connection with Dr. Jardine. They were rather too often in each other’s presence when the Princesse was in Paris. But then the Princesse allowed herself certain liberties which might blemish a lesser woman’s reputation. Looking at Jardine, she thought she guessed what was unspoken.

  Jacob knew too well what Eugènie de Troye was thinking. With a dexterity which spoke of years spent in salons of varying aspects, he flattered Eugènie while drawing her out. All the time, he was looking for a way to tackle the subject which he had come about without being too obvious. The teapot from which the maid replenished his cup gave him the opportunity.

  ‘Ah, isn’t that part of the famous Polish Cmielow porcelain? How very fine. Of course, I had quite forgotten, your family is from Poland, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘I met a rather interesting young Polish woman not so long ago. Sylvie Kowalska,’ Jacob had to keep his tongue from stumbling over the name, so heavy had it grown with significance.

  ‘Yes, the young Kowalska. Her godparents, Paul et Juliette Escard, are good friends of the Princesse’s.’ This, in Eugènie de Troye’s mind, accounted for any connection Sylvie might have with Jacob. Jacob, on the other hand, had to hide the confusion the link caused in him. His world seemed to be growing far too small. He could only trust himself to nod interrogatively.

  He needn’t have worried, however, for Eugènie de Troye, was an adept at gossip. An energetic woman, she had resigned herself to the constrained activity her class imposed on her. All her animation and her aspirations now went into her social life. And if she could please this young friend of the Princesse’s by entertaining him with what was by any standards a choice tale, she would have no hesitation in doing so.

  ‘Poor Sylvie. It’s a sad tale. She was sent to school here at the age of thirteen by her parents. They used to come and visit her regularly. Good stock, you know, nobility, but a little wild, especially the mother, and a little impoverished. The Escards looked after Sylvie, when she wasn’t in the convent. Then, now let’s see, when was it? Three or four years ago, there was a fatal flying accident. The mother and father were both killed and the little boy, Sylvie’s brother. The father liked to fly it seems. It was his passion. They were on their way here, I believe. Met a storm over the Alps and came straight down.’ Eugènie made a dramatic swooping gesture with her hand. ‘It was all over instantly. Poor Sylvie.’

  ‘I see,’ Jacob murmured.

  ‘There’s a grandfather left and uncles and aunts, of course. But the Escards thought it would be better for Sylvie to finish her schooling here. I believe she wanted that as well. They’ve replaced her family. She’s not an easy child, I’m told. Still with all that…’ Eugènie threw her arms up in the air.

  Jacob shook his head. ‘Tragic,’ he said quietly. The air of the room had become stifling. He simultaneously wanted to get up and go, and to barrage his hostess with questions about Sylvie. Politeness would allow neither. He searched his mind for other subjects and could find none. Luckily his hostess had no such problems. She was burning with interest about psychoanalysis, his séjour in Vienna. She had heard he had met the infamous Dr. Freud.

  Jacob set out to try and put some order into her inchoate views. Psychoanalysis in France in the 1930s was still a largely unknown terrain. In the popular mind, its members were conceived of as sexually obsessed quacks at best. It often tickled Jacob’s imagination to think of how shocked the holders of such views would be if they met the eminently reasonable Dr. Freud in the midst of his staunchly bourgeois household. But whatever people’s feelings about the new science and practice of psychoanalysis, the subject never failed to stir curiosity. Jacob was surprised to find one of the group forming round him had read a paper of his on paranoia and the logic of the criminal. Conversation inevitably turned to the case of Violette Nozière. Moral ou
trage was passionately voiced and when Jacob quietly urged that none of this had to do with morality, there was a breathless hush in the room. He seized the occasion to thank his hostess and make his departure.

  The following Saturday Jacob Jardine sat tensely in the large cool hall of the Couvent de Saint Ange. Stone walls, bare but for pictures of the saints, hard wooden seats, an aura of austerity imposed itself on the gathered company. All eyes were on the raised platform at the front of the room. Here a grand piano and a harp stood, lit by the colours which filtered through two stained glass windows. The contrast between the vivid stage and the sombre room could not have been more dramatic.

  Jacob Jardine was a man who rarely worried about the impression he made on his fellows. Adored child of a doting mother and a father who treated him as an intelligent equal, he had always been far too preoccupied with whatever goal he was pursuing to give second thoughts to the figure he might cut in the course of that pursuit. Nonetheless on this occasion, society’s mirror confronted him with unsparing severity. In the hushed atmosphere of the convent, amidst the soberly clad families, scrubbed children and the omnipresent white-faced nuns, he suddenly saw himself as a man bent on ludicrous folly. Surely it was visible to everyone that he was here on a passionate mission utterly antithetical to the whole atmosphere of the place? He almost turned round and went home. And then, remembering the obsessive anticipation with which he had looked forward to this day, he sat as inconspicuously as he could at the very back of the hall.

  One by one the girls, dressed in virginal white, sat down at piano or harp. Their names, the music they were to play, were announced by a clear-voiced nun. Jacob waited and listened and waited. The playing was of varied skill, the girls of varying ages. His waiting took on a tactile quality. He could feel it in the muscles of his legs, in his taut shoulders. At last she was there. Her hair was tightly drawn back in a knot. Her face, with its pure lines, was luminous in the golden glow of the coloured glass. She played. A rush of breath escaped Jacob’s lips. Rich, sonorous, the music flowed effortlessly from her hands. They flew over the rapid arpeggios, the innumerable trills af a Liszt Rhapsody. She played for effect, mustering drama, exaggerating fortissimi, dwelling on the rallentandi. The applause was raucous, felt. There were shouts of encore. Joseph joined them.

  Sylvie stood and made a small, graceful bow to the audience. Her eyes scanned their numbers. At last, after what seemed a long moment, they fell on him. A wide smile spread over her features. And then, but he couldn’t be sure, it all happened so quickly, she winked at him: the rakish gesture of a street urchin turned vamp. The audience’s applause continued, the calls for an encore. The starched nun nodded at Sylvie. She sat down at the piano again, paused for a second, and then with a wildness which matched the throbbing rhythms of the music brought a new kind of life into the room. Rhapsody in Blue. Before Jacob lost himself to the music, he noticed a look of bewilderment spread over the nun’s face.

  The applause this time was more contained. There were some looks of incredulity. Jacob smiled. He had made up his mind. He wrote a hurried card to Sylvie, taking care that it could pass before the eyes of others with no undue repercussions. ‘Congratulations. You played wonderfully. Do come and see me as soon as you can. I shall be at home Monday and Thursday evening and over the weekend.’ He added, for the nuns: ‘We would all like to hear you play.’ He was pleased that the new cards bore both his hospital and home address. The word doctor, after all, was a sign of a certain reliability.

  Before making a hurried exit, Jacob politely asked one of the nuns to give his note to Sylvie.

  Despite the pressures of innumerable commitments, time now lay heavily on Jacob’s hands. Though he felt increasingly certain that Sylvie would come to see him, he had no way of knowing when. It was fortunate that the case he was currently writing up fascinated him to the degree that few did. He had spent the last months working in the hospital with a certain Naomi, a woman of middle years who had spent a blameless life until one evening, she had attempted to knife a famous opera singer. Her attempt had failed and, since the singer had not brought a charge, Naomi had been sent to Sainte-Anne. Here Jacob had unearthed the intricate web of connections which had led this woman to attempt to kill a person she had never met, but whom she saw as her arch rival in life, a persecuting presence who invaded her dreams and daily activities.

  Sylvie did not turn up on the first of the appointed evenings, nor the second, nor the third. Restless, Jacob cursed his inactivity. He felt trapped in the momentum of waiting. He had not really expected her before the weekend. Convent regimes were strict. But he knew that girls often went home at the end of the week and this was Friday. By 10 o’clock he was in a foul humour. He went out to lose himself in the crowds and make his way to the Coupole. It was a regular haunt for his friends.

  He was not disappointed. No sooner had Jacob set foot in the vast, noisy interior of the famous restaurant than he heard his name called. He joined the group. There was the actress, Corinne, whose striking dark eyes and throaty voice could reduce an audience to tears in seconds. Jacob had had a brief affair with her some years back which had ended amicably on both sides. Jean Paul Sartre was there holding forth in his suasive tones, and his mistress Simone whose laugh came boomingly from her petite frame. He had met them once before with his painter friend Michel St Loup who now introduced him to some others at the table.

  Jacob ordered quickly. The group were discussing Germany, from where Sartre had just returned, horrified at the temper of the country, the mass rallies which had the power of transforming thousands of people into a single entity, all under the spell of a single man. With vivid detail, he evoked the image of a nation hypnotised by a voice which played on all its hidden fears and glorious hopes, a voice which was rapidly stripping the country of any constitutional controls, the voice of a dictator.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ the woman opposite Jacob suddenly said in an unmistakably American accent. I didn’t come all the way from North Carolina’ - she drawled the words - ‘to spend my first weekend in Paris drowning in gloom.’

  They all burst out laughing. Jacob looked at the woman. Her blonde hair was cut boyishly short and accentuated her arresting features - chestnut eyes, a straight nose, full, generous lips, and with it all an impish expression.

  ‘Why don’t we all go dancing. We’ve been sitting here nattering for what seems like days.’

  It was while he was looking at the American that Jacob saw reflected in the mirror just behind her the person in the world he had least expected to see here. Sylvie. Yes, it was distinctly her. She was walking through the restaurant arm in arm with a dark youth, a student, he thought. Her mouth was painted a dazzling red.

  ‘You’ve seen a ghost?‘ the American woman said in English.

  Jacob pulled himself together. ‘No, no just an unexpected friend,’ he answered her in kind. ‘Did I hear you say you wanted to go dancing?’ Suddenly it seemed the best idea in the world.

  ‘Mmm. Amy’s my name. Dancing’s my game,’ she drawled. ‘Particularly with a Frenchman who speaks some English.’ She seemed to be laughing at him.

  Jacob didn’t mind. All he wanted was to lose himself. ‘Amy’ he tasted the name. ‘Shall we go.’

  They said goodbye to the others. Jacob deliberately led Amy a round about way to the door. He had to ascertain that the woman he had seen was indeed Sylvie. Yes, it was her, despite the too red-mouth, the sleek black dress. Jacob stiffened. To think that he had been worried about her innocence. He placed his arm loosely on Amy’s shoulder. She was tall, almost at tall as he.

  ‘So you’ve seen the unexpected person again,’ Amy said flatly.

  ‘You’re very observant.’

  ‘I’ve had to learn. You men aren’t very easy to deal with, you know.’

  ‘Neither are you women,’ Jacob’s look challenged her.

  ‘Oh me, I’m as easy as apple pie,’ Amy drawled.

  And she was, Jacob noted
to himself sometime in the course of that long night. Though the flavour was somewhat richer. They danced. They boogy-woogied in a black jazz club that had recently opened its doors to an avid Quartier Latin. They fox-trotted in another more decorous locale on the Rue de Seine. They were perfectly in step, perfectly matched. They danced as if there were no tomorrow and too many yesterdays needed to be forgotten.

  ‘We’re in the same boat, aren’t we?’ she said to him over a drink at some point in the evening.

  He looked into her strong, intelligent face. ‘Yes, maybe we are.’

  ‘Perhaps we should be in the same bed,’ she said it calmly.

  He held her hand, stroked it delicately. ‘If I liked you less…’ he said.

  ‘And desired me more,’ she finished his sentence for him.

  He shrugged, nodded, admitting it.

  ‘And you, supposedly an expert in the human psyche,’ she challenged him.

  He pulled her up onto the dance floor and held her close. ‘A mere man,’ he whispered in her ear.

  In the small hours of the morning, he took her home. In the courtyard, he kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Thank you, Amy. Let’s meet again soon.’ He said it with great seriousness.

  She nodded.

  Jacob walked. He walked through dark empty streets, hating himself. Almost, once or twice, he turned back towards Amy’s flat. Her body would have been warm, lavish, welcoming. And here he was chilled, alone, with only the illusory heat of an obsession to warm him. He stopped on the small bridge leading to the Ile St Louis where his apartment was and looked down into the shadowy waters of the Seine. Why was it always the obscure, the unknown which drew him? He shrugged and saw the light reflected in the waters flicker over ripples and shape itself into Sylvie’s enigmatic form.

  The next day Jacob sat in his study overlooking the Seine and pondered the papers in front of him. They were filled with his own writing, pages and pages of it in a bold, strong hand. Now his pen lay open, but unused. He had slept fitfully and had risen late. A cup of cold coffee stood half drunk on the large mahogany desk. His mind wasn’t on his work. He stood to his full height and passed a hand through already tousled hair. He had not bothered to get dressed yet and his woollen robe was loosely tied round his lean frame.