“A dog will teach my son to add and subtract?” said Roger. Simone had wondered if a dog would make Luc affectionate and polite, more grateful for his parents’ devotion, aware of the many sacrifices they had made on his behalf.
Yes, yes, they had been assured. A dog could do all that.
Luc was twelve years old, the puppy ten weeks. Encouraged to find a name for him, Luc came up with “Mongrel.” Simone chose “Sylvestre.” Sylvestre spent his first night in Luc’s room—part of the night, that is. When he began to whine, Luc put him out. After that, Sylvestre was fed, trained, and walked by Luc’s parents, while Luc continued to find school a mystery and to show indifference and ingratitude. Want of thanks is a parent’s lot, but blindness to simple arithmetic was like an early warning of catastrophe. Luc’s parents had already told him he was to train as an engineer.
“Do you know how stiff the competition is?” his mother asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be turned down by the best schools?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to be sent to a third-rate school, miles from home? Have you thought about that?”
Roger leaned on Simone, though he did not need to, and became querulous: “Sylvestre and I are two old men.”
This was not what Simone liked to talk about. She said, “Your family never took you into consideration. You slept in your father’s study. You took second best.”
“It didn’t feel that way.”
“Look at our miserable country house. Look at your cousin Henri’s estate.”
“His godmother gave it to him,” said Roger, as though she needed reminding.
“He should have given you compensation.”
“People don’t do that,” said Roger. “All I needed was a richer godmother.”
“The apartment is mine,” said Simone, as they walked arm in arm. “The furniture is yours. The house in the country is yours, but most of the furniture belongs to me. You paid for the pool and the tennis court.” It was not unpleasant conversation.
Roger stopped in front of a pastry shop and showed Simone a chocolate cake. “Why can’t we have that?”
“Because it would kill you. The specialist said so.”
“We could have oysters,” Roger said. “I’m allowed oysters.”
“Luc will be home,” said Simone. “He doesn’t like them.”
Father Rousseau sent for the Clairevoies again. This time he wore a tweed jacket over a white sweater, with a small crucifix on one lapel and a Solidarność badge on the other. After lighting his cigarette he sat drumming his fingers, as if wondering how to put his grim news into focus. At last he said, “No one can concentrate on an exam and on a woman. Not at the same time.”
“Women?” cried Simone. “What women?”
“Woman,” Roger corrected, unheard.
There was a woman in Luc’s life. It seemed unbelievable, but it was so.
“French?” said Roger instantly.
Father Rousseau was unable to swear to it. Her name was Katia, her surname Martin, but if Martin was the most common family name in France it might be because so many foreigners adopted it.
“I can find out,” Simone interrupted. “What’s her age?”
Katia was eighteen. Her parents were divorced.
“That’s bad,” said Simone. “Who’s her father?”
She lived in Biarritz with her mother, but came often to Paris to stay with her father and brother. Her brother belonged to a political debating society.
“I’ve seen him,” said Simone. “I know the one. She’s a terrorist. Am I right?”
Father Rousseau doubted it. “She is a spoiled, rich, undereducated young woman, used to having her own way. She is also very much in love.”
“With Luc?” said Roger.
“Luc is a Capricorn,” said Simone. “The most levelheaded of all the signs.”
So was Katia, Father Rousseau said. She and Luc wrote “Capricorn loves Capricorn” in the dust on parked cars.
“Does Luc want to marry her?” said Simone, getting over the worst.
“He wants something.” But Father Rousseau hoped it would not be Katia. She seemed to have left school early, after a number of misadventures. She was hardly the person to inspire Luc, who needed a model he could copy. When Katia was around, Luc did not even pretend to study. When she was in Biarritz, he waited for letters. The two collected lump sugar from cafés but seemed to have no other cultural interest.
“She’s from a rich family?” Simone said. “And she has just the one brother?”
“Luc has got to pass his entrance examination,” said Roger. “After he gets his degree he can marry anyone he likes.”
“ ‘Rich’ is a relative term,” said Simone, implying that Father Rousseau was too unworldly to define such a thing.
Roger said, “How do you know about the sugar and ‘Capricorn loves Capricorn’ and how Luc and Katia got to know each other?”
“Why, from Katia’s letters, of course,” said Father Rousseau, sounding surprised.
“Did you keep copies?” said Simone.
“Do you know that Luc is of age, and that he could take you to court for reading his mail?” said Roger.
Father Rousseau turned to Simone, the rational parent. “Not a word of reproach,” he warned her. “Just keep an eye on the situation. We feel that Luc should spend the next few weeks at home, close to his parents.” He would come back to Rennes just before the examination, for last-minute heavy cramming. Roger understood this to be a smooth Jesuitical manner of getting rid of Luc.
Luc came home, and no one reproached him. He promised to work hard and proposed going alone to the country house, which was near Auxerre. Simone objected that the place had been unheated all winter. Luc replied that he would live in one room and take his meals in the village. Roger guessed that Luc intended to spend a good amount of time with Cousin Henri, who lived nearby, and whom Luc—no one knew why—professed to admire. Cousin Henri and Roger enjoyed property litigation of long standing, but as there was a dim, far chance of Henri’s leaving something to Luc, Roger said nothing. And as Simone pointed out, meaning by this nothing unkind or offensive, any male model for Luc was better than none.
In the meantime, letters from Katia, forwarded from Rennes, arrived at the Paris apartment. Roger watched in pure amazement the way Simone managed to open them, rolling a kitchen match under the flap. Having read the letter, she resealed it without trace. The better the quality of the paper, the easier the match trick, she explained. She held a page up to the light, approving the watermark.
“We’ll need a huge apartment, because we will have so many children,” Katia wrote. “And we’ll need space for the sugar collection.”
The only huge apartment Simone could think of was her own. “They wish we were dead,” she told Roger. “My son wishes I were out of the way.” She read aloud, “ ‘What would you be without me? One more little Frenchman, eternally studying for exams.’ ”
“What does she mean by ‘little Frenchman’?” said Roger. He decided that Katia must be foreign—a descendant of White Russians, perhaps. There had been a colony in Biarritz in his father’s day, the men gambling away their wives’ tiaras before settling down as headwaiters and croupiers. Luc was entangled in a foreign love affair; he was already alien, estranged. Roger had seen him standing at the window, like an idle landowner in a Russian novel. What did Roger know about Russians? There were the modern ones, dressed in gray, with bulldog faces; there were the slothful, mournful people in books, the impulsive and slender women, the indecisive men. But it had been years since Roger had opened a novel; what he saw were overlapping images, like stills from old films.
“ ‘Where are you, where are you?’ ” read Simone. “ ‘There is a light in your parents’ room, but your windows are dark. I’m standing under the awning across the street. My shoes are soaked. I am too miserable to care.’
“She can’t be moping in the
rain and writing all at the same time,” said Simone. “And the postmark is Biarritz. She comes to Paris to stir up trouble. How does she know which room is ours? Luc is probably sick of her. He must have been at a meeting.”
Yes, he had probably been at a meeting, sitting on the floor of a pale room, with a soft-voiced old man telling him about an older, truer Europe. Luc was learning a Europe caught in amber, unchanging, with trees for gods. There was no law against paganism and politics, or soft-voiced old men.
At least there are no guns, Roger told himself. And where had Simone learned the way to open other people’s letters? He marveled at Katia’s doing for his son what no woman had ever done for him; she had stood in the rain, crying probably, watching for a light.
Ten days before Easter, Cassandra Brunt arrived. Her father was a civil servant, like Roger. He was also an author: Two books had been published, one about Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, the other about the failure of the Maginot Line and the disgraceful conduct of the French officer class. Both had been sent to the Clairevoies, with courteous inscriptions. When Simone had gone over to England alone, to see if the Brunts would do for Luc, Mrs. Brunt confided that her husband was more interested in the philosophy of combat than in success and defeat. He was a dreamer, and that was why he had never got ahead. Simone replied that Roger, too, had been hampered by guiding principles. As a youth, he had read for his own pleasure. His life was a dream. Mrs. Brunt suggested a major difference: Mr. Brunt was no full-time dreamer. He had written five books, two of which had been printed, one in 1952 and one in 1966. The two women had then considered each other’s child, decided it was sexless and safe and that Luc and Cassandra could spend time under the same roof. After that, Luc crossed the Channel for three visits, while Simone managed not to have Cassandra even once. Her excuse was the extreme youth of Cassandra and the dangers of Paris. Now that Cassandra was fifteen Mrs. Brunt, suddenly exercising her sense of things owed, had written to say that Cassandra was ready for perils and the French.
Roger and Simone met Cassandra at the Gare du Nord. The moment he saw her, Roger understood she had been forced by her parents to make the trip, and that they were ruining her Easter holiday. He marveled that a fifteen-year-old of her size and apparent strength could be bullied into anything.
“I’ll be seeing Luc, what fun,” said Cassandra, jackknifed into the car, her knees all but touching her chin. “It will be nice to see Luc,” she said sadly. Her fair hair almost covered her face.
“Luc is at our country residence, studying with all the strength of his soul,” said Simone. “He is in the Yonne,” she added. Cassandra looked puzzled. Roger supposed that to a foreigner it must sound as though Luc had fallen into a river.
There had been no coaxing Luc, no pleading; no threat was strong enough to frighten him. They could keep the BMW; they could stop his allowance; they could put him in jail. He would not come to Paris to welcome Cassandra. He was through with England, through with the Brunts—through, for that matter, with his mother and father. Katia had taken their place.
“We’ll have her in Paris for a week, alone,” Simone had wailed. Luc’s argument was unassailable; alone, he could study. Once they were all there, he would have to be kind to Cassandra, making conversation and showing her the village church. Simone put the blame on Mrs. Brunt, who had insisted in a wholly obtuse way on having her rights.
“How are your delicious parents?” she asked, turning as well as the seat belt allowed, seeming to let the car drive itself in Paris traffic.
“Daddy’s at home now. He’s retired from the minstrel.”
“The ministry,” said Simone deeply. Cassandra’s was the only English she had ever completely understood. “My husband has also retired from public service. It was too much for his heart. He is much younger than Mr. Brunt, I believe.”
“Daddy was a late starter,” said Cassandra. “But he’ll last a long time. At least, I hope so.”
Like the dog bought to improve Luc’s arithmetic; like the tropical fish Simone had tended for Luc, and eventually mourned; like the tennis court in which Luc had at once lost interest and on which Roger had had his first heart attack, so Cassandra fell to Luc’s parents. With Simone, she watched television; with Roger, she walked uphill and down, to parks and museums.
“What was your minstrel?” she asked Roger, as they marched toward the Bois.
“Years ago, when there was a grave shortage of telephones, thanks to President de Gaulle—” Roger began. “Do you recall that unhappy time?”
“I’m afraid I’m dreffly ignorant.”
“I was good at getting friends off the waiting list. That was what I did best.”
He clutched her arm, dragging her out of the way of buses and taxis that rushed from the left while Cassandra looked hopelessly right.
“You like the nature?” he said, letting Sylvestre run free in the Bois. “The trees?”
“My mother does. Though this is hardly nature, is it?”
Sylvestre loped, snuffling, into a club of dusty shrubbery. He gave a yelp and came waddling out. All Roger saw of the person who had kicked him was a flash of white boot.
“You have them in England?” said Roger.
“Have what?”
“That. Male, female. Prostitutes.”
“Yes, of course. But they aren’t vile to animals.”
“You like the modern art?” Roger asked, breathless, as they plodded up the stalled escalators of the Beaubourg museum.
“I’m horribly old-fashioned, I’m afraid.”
Halfway, he paused to let his heart rest. His heart was an old pump, clogged and filthy. Cassandra’s heart was of bright new metal; it beat more quietly and regularly than any clock.
Above the city stretched a haze of pollution, unstirring, all of an even color. The sun suffused the haze with amber dye, which by some grim alchemy was turned into dun. Roger saw through the haze to a forgotten city, unchanging, and it was enough to wrench the heart. A hand, reaching inside the rib cage, seemed to grasp the glutted machine. He knew that some part of the machine was intact, faithful to him; when his heart disowned him entirely he might as well die.
Cassandra, murmuring that looking down made her feel giddy, turned her back. Roger watched a couple, below, walking hand in hand. He was too far away to see their faces. They were eating out of a shared paper bag. The young man looked around, perhaps for a bin. Finding none, he handed the bag to the girl, who flung it down. The two were dressed nearly alike, in blue jackets and jeans. Simone had assured Roger that Katia was French, but he still saw her Russian. He saw Katia in winter furs, with a fur hat, and long fair hair over a snowy collar. She removed a glove and gave the hand, warm, to Luc to hold.
“I’m afraid I must be getting lazy,” Cassandra remarked. “I found that quite a climb.”
The couple in blue had turned a corner. Of Luc and Katia there remained footsteps on lightly fallen snow.
“This place reminds me of a giant food processor,” said Cassandra. “What does it make you think of?”
“Young lovers,” Roger said.
Cassandra had a good point in Simone’s eyes: She kept a diary, which Simone used to improve her English.
“The Baron has sex on the brain,” Simone read. “Even a museum reminds him of sex. In the Bois de Boulogne he tried to twist the conversation around to sex and bestiality. You have to be careful every minute. Each time we have to cross the road he tries to squeeze my arm.”
When Cassandra had been shown enough of Paris, Simone packed the car with food that Luc liked to eat and drove south and east with the dog, Roger, and Cassandra. They stopped often during the journey so that Cassandra, who sat in the back of the car, could get out and be sick. They found Luc living like an elderly squatter in a ground-floor room full of toast crusts. It was three in the afternoon, and he was still wearing pajamas. Inevitably, Cassandra asked if he was ill.
“Katia’s been here,” said Simone, going round the house and op
ening shutters. “I can tell. It’s in the air.”
Luc was occupying the room meant for Cassandra. He showed no willingness to give it up. He took slight notice of his parents, and none whatever of their guest. It seemed to Roger that he had grown taller, but this was surely an illusion, a psychological image in Roger’s mind. His affair, if Roger could call it that, had certainly made him bolder. He mentioned Katia by name, saying that one advantage of living alone was that he could read his mail before anyone else got to it. Roger foresaw a holiday of bursting quarrels. He supposed Cassandra would go home and tell her father, the historian, that the French were always like that.
On the day they arrived, Simone intercepted and read a letter. Katia, apparently in answer to some questioning from Luc, explained that she had almost, but not entirely, submitted to the advances of a cousin. (Luc, to forestall his mother, met the postman at the gate. Simone, to short-circuit Luc, had already picked up the letters that interested her at the village post office.) Katia’s near seduction had taken place in a field of barley, while her cousin was on leave from military service. A lyrical account of clouds, birds, and crickets took up most of a page.
Roger would not touch the letter, but he listened as Simone read aloud. It seemed to him that some coarse appreciation of the cousin was concealed behind all those crickets and birds. Katia’s blithe candor was insolent, a slur on his son. At the same time, he took heart: If a cousin was liable for Army duty, some part of the family must be French. On the other hand, who would rape his cousin in a barley field, if not a Russian?
“You swore Katia was French,” he said, greatly troubled.
He knew nothing of Katia, but he did know something about fields. Roger decided he did not believe a word of the story. Katia was trying to turn Luc into a harmless and impotent bachelor friend. The two belonged in a novel of the early 1950s. (Simone, as Roger said this, began to frown.) “Luc is the good, kind man she can tell stories to,” he said. “Her stories will be more and more about other men.” As Simone drew breath, he said quickly, “Not that I see Luc in a novel.”
The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant Page 77
