Carnival has been resuscitated in recent years, propped up in the interest of luring tourists to Venice during damp and chilly February, with its frequent shrouding fogs, its almost certain rains, its entirely possible snows, its ever-more-likely acqua alta, the frigid high tide from the encroaching Adriatic. During the ten days before the beginning of Lent the streets of Venice are choked with people, some in costume, and some not. The Piazza San Marco echoes, not with the strains of the Venetian furlana, but with rock music loud enough to rattle the domes of the Basilica. Wine bottles smash on the ancient paving stones. Harassed waiters wearing paper hats serve pizza after pizza.
Venice sinks, its serene magnificence peels away in the poisoned air. Beauty and death, death and beauty, entwine here as nowhere else.
Venice has at times been a starting point— as it was for Marco Polo— but it has more often been a destination. Many Venetian stories begin elsewhere.
As does this one.
SALLY ALONE
The cold of the stone parapet seeped through Sally’s coat as she leaned staring at the surging waters of the Seine. The sky was lowering, almost as dark as the water, and the wind rattled past the shuttered stalls of the dealers in old books and prints that lined the quay. She gazed at the leafless trees, the towers of Notre-Dame, the stone facades of this city she hated so much.
Brian would have called Jean-Pierre. She imagined Brian in the hallway where the phone was, sitting on the backs of his heels and leaning against the wall the way he did. Would he be laughing with relief, his earlobes pink, or would he be serious, concerned? I don’t know how she took it, Jean-Pierre, she just walked out. I’m really worried about what she might do.
She pulled her knit hat down over her ears. In Tallahassee it was eight in the morning, the day just starting. Pale sun lay on the white buildings around the capitol, sifted through Spanish moss. In Tallahassee it’s only eight in the morning, and this hasn’t happened yet. In Tallahassee, it wouldn’t happen at all.
I don’t know what she might do, Jean-Pierre. What am I going to do? She turned away from Notre-Dame and continued along the Seine. When they’d come to Paris last fall, Brian had taken her on this same walk. His voice hoarse with excitement, he had read from his green Michelin guide to Paris— facts, figures, bits of history she immediately forgot.
He was going to law school. That was the understanding when they got married. The word “Sorbonne” had never been mentioned before the wedding. He had sent off applications, gotten accepted. She had her brand-new degree, her elementary education credential. Then he saw a notice on a bulletin board, or overheard some conversation, and from then on it was the Sorbonne and nothing else.
At the Pont-Neuf, she crossed to the statue. Henri IV. By this time, she knew who it was. She stood directly in back of the horse’s hindquarters and stared at its muscular bronze rump. I’m looking at myself. A horse’s ass. Because if I had any sense at all, I would’ve seen this coming, somehow.
A real horse’s ass. Yet she had never understood or foreseen anything Brian did, so why should she have foreseen this? She had been amazed that he asked her out for the first time. He was so handsome and she, she knew very well, was nothing special. She had been amazed when he asked her to marry him. She had been amazed when he decided they had to come to France. Why shouldn’t she be amazed now?
The only thing is, I wish he hadn’t brought me so far from home.
She bent her head against the wind and continued down the quay.
BRIAN AND JEAN-PIERRE
Jean-Pierre watched Brian thread his way through the crowded café. Brian was slim, with loose golden-brown ringlets that fell over his forehead. Apollo, Jean-Pierre thought. Michelangelo’s David. And then cursed himself for thinking of Brian in clichés. Brian is Brian. Brian is Brian, and that’s enough. Jean-Pierre was dark, with brushy black hair and a pouting underlip. He had often thought that when he and Brian were together they looked almost comically like Typical French Student and Typical American Student.
Brian couldn’t possibly be anything but American. Jean-Pierre had seen it in that first blinding moment in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, had known even before Brian stopped him and asked, in halting, absurdly accented French, the way to one of the lecture halls. Jean-Pierre’s lips curled as he watched Brian’s rangy American walk.
Brian stood beside Jean-Pierre. When Jean-Pierre felt Brian’s hand squeeze his shoulder, he swallowed and looked down at his empty coffee cup. “Bonjour,” he said.
“Bonjour.” Brian slid into a chair next to Jean-Pierre, pressed his palms together, and rested his face against their edges. “God,” he said.
The Café du Coin was on the Boulevard St. Michel, in the Latin Quarter. It was brightly lit, loud with scores of discussions. Waiters rushed by with trays, slopping beer or coffee on the tabletops when they slammed down glasses or cups. Jean-Pierre had introduced Brian and Sally to the group here, at a table across the room from where he and Brian were sitting now. Bringing Brian into the group had given Jean-Pierre an excuse to see him regularly.
The first encounter had not gone well. Jean-Pierre had tried to explain in advance to Brian about Tom and Tom’s significance, but Brian hadn’t seemed impressed. When it became obvious that Brian knew next to nothing about the student revolt in Paris in May of 1968, Tom had raised his eyebrows at Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre flushed and saw Francine and Rolf exchange smiles.
Even worse had been Sally— pale, freckled, brown-haired, wearing jeans and a strange, shapeless sweater with a motif of geese in flight. Jean-Pierre remembered his dismay when he met Brian’s wife. Not only because she was too plain-looking for Brian, but because when Jean-Pierre first saw Brian in the Sorbonne courtyard, he had felt— everything. Everything he felt now.
Brian was slumped in his chair, his gaze unfocused.
“It was bad?” asked Jean-Pierre.
“It wasn’t fabulous.” Brian shook his head. “I don’t understand her. Anything about her. How her head works, anything.”
Jean-Pierre tried to suppress his jealousy. He didn’t want Brian to worry about understanding Sally. Brian’s knee was near his side. Jean-Pierre patted it, he hoped consolingly, and felt his own muscles weaken at the touch. “It will be all right,” he said.
“Yeah,” Brian said. “I could use a coffee.”
When he finished his espresso, Brian looked at Jean-Pierre for the first time since he sat down. The pupils of his eyes were huge. “I did it,” he said.
“Yes.” Jean-Pierre sat forward.
“I had to. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t possible.”
“Of course.” Jean-Pierre’s face was burning. “You’ve just begun to explore what you are. It’s the beginning of a voyage of discovery. It’s exciting— a miracle, really.” He loved to explain these things to Brian.
“That’s right.” Jean-Pierre’s square, short-fingered hand lay on the table. Brian picked it up and brushed his lips over Jean-Pierre’s knuckles.
Jean-Pierre couldn’t speak for a moment. Then he burst out, “Brian, I’m so impatient to be with you always!”
Brian sighed, and Jean-Pierre felt immediate, bitter regret for his words. “I’ve still got some kind of responsibility to Sally,” Brian said.
“Of course, of course. You mustn’t worry at all—”
“I can’t just dump her here in Paris. She has to figure out what she’s going to do.” Brian’s jaw was set, almost pugnacious.
“Naturally, naturally.” Jean-Pierre nodded vigorously. “What did she say?”
“Nothing. She just got up and left.”
“Nothing? Surely she—”
“Not a word.”
Jean-Pierre was baffled. Sally was very strange. Then he thought, Sally might run away back to the States. Today. Or she might kill herself. He was surprised at how much these ideas appealed to him.
“You never liked Sally,” Brian said, and cut off with a gesture Jean-Pierre’s protest. “But there’s a lot to
Sally. She’s a good person, a really good person. She thinks about things, too. Don’t imagine she doesn’t think about things.”
Jean-Pierre forbore to mention how Brian had often railed against Sally— her obtuseness and insensitivity and even, he seemed to remember, her stupidity.
“Sally doesn’t deserve to be hurt,” Brian said. His face was morose.
“Certainly not.” Jean-Pierre’s tone was a little more brisk than he had intended.
After a moment, Brian looked around. “You haven’t seen any of the others?”
“They were going to be at Tom’s. I’m sure they’re very curious by now.”
Brian smiled. His eyelids drooped. “They’ll have to be curious a little longer,” he said.
“Why is that?” said Jean-Pierre, and held his breath.
Brian’s smile widened. “There’s something we have to do first.”
Jean-Pierre closed his eyes until the first wave of joy subsided. “All right,” he said, and wound his scarf around his neck before going out into the cold afternoon with Brian.
AT TOM’S
“Maybe Brian chickened out,” said Tom. His raucous laughter filled the room.
Francine didn’t glance up from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Rolf smirked as he lit another cigarette, but said nothing. Only Olga, Tom’s wife, called from the kitchen, “What’s so funny?”
Tom stopped laughing. He didn’t like to include Olga in the group’s business. Usually she wasn’t around, because she was at her research job at the Pasteur Institute. Today, of all days, she was home with the flu. She put her head around the door. Her short gray hair stuck out wildly where she’d been lying on it in bed. “Did you say something?” she asked.
Tom shook his head. “No. Nothing.”
She glanced at the others. “I’m making tea. Does anybody want some?” When nobody replied, she disappeared into the kitchen again.
Tom poured himself more wine. In his forties, he was twenty years older than the other group members, his disciples. At first, when the fervor was fresh and his book was just out, disciples had been easy to get. Tom sometimes wondered, more frequently as time went on, what different turn his life might have taken if he hadn’t been at the Sorbonne when the French student revolt broke out in May 1968. He could’ve been home in the States, he could’ve been in Vietnam, but he’d been at the Sorbonne. He’d known nothing about French politics, but he’d jumped in with both feet because he was young, and it had been exciting to dig cobblestones out of the streets and lob them at the gendarmes, and stay up all night in strategy meetings where he couldn’t understand half of what was being said.
Tom would never forget the electricity, the intoxication. Luckily he’d had the good sense to keep a diary. The published version had made a nice splash in both the United States and France. Even today, when the French put together a solemn May ’68 retrospective on television, complete with the pontifical bullshitting they did so well, Tom and his book, From the Barricades, were always mentioned, although these days Tom wasn’t often asked to participate.
May ’68 was a long time ago now. Tom hadn’t gotten seriously into anything since. At first it hadn’t mattered, because there had been plenty of people around who were willing to hang out in the cafés and talk. Hanging out in cafés and talking was what Tom liked to do, and it finally occurred to him that it might be the basis for a career. He would take some of the people he hung out with, study them, and write them up. Exactly what his premise would be, he had never quite decided. After a lot of changes in personnel he’d ended up with Jean-Pierre, Francine, and Rolf. Olga had her laboratory; they were Tom’s, although they didn’t know it. Tom kept meticulous notes on them, and when the time was right he would produce a work to rival, even eclipse, From the Barricades.
Tom watched Francine as she shifted her position on the couch, her eyes still on her book. Her heavy breasts, unfettered under her sweatshirt, moved and resettled. Her thighs strained at the red corduroy of her trousers. Tom hoped to indulge in a close study of Francine, when the time was right.
The room was stuffy, overheated. Books and newspapers covered every surface. The apartment, in a modern concrete box near the Tour Montparnasse, was barely big enough for Tom and Olga and their teenage son, Stefan. Tom really had no place to do his work.
Rolf had been glancing at yesterday’s issue of Libération, He put it down and stretched his thin arms over his head. “I’m off,” he said.
“No!” Tom whirled toward Rolf too violently. “We agreed to wait,” he said, striving for a reasonable tone.
“We have waited,” said Rolf. He stood up, blond and wraith-like in the cold light from the window.
None of them knew much about Rolf. They deduced that he had spent some years in the States, because he occasionally referred to New York, Boston, Denver, or other places. He never said anything about where he had been before that. His English was perfect idiomatic American, spoken with a slight, indefinable accent. Tom had met him at the little bistro where Rolf worked as a waiter and had solicited him for the group because he thought Rolf had an interesting outlaw quality. Tom sometimes referred to Rolf as the Man of Mystery. If they were having a discussion and Rolf was silent, Tom would turn to him and ask, “What does the Man of Mystery have to say?”
Tom said, “Come on, Rolf—” and Olga walked in carrying a teapot and mug on a tray. She was wearing a blue quilted bathrobe with a tattered tissue protruding from one pocket.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said. “I ache all over. Every muscle. Sweetheart”— she turned to Tom— “if you’re going out, pick up some oranges, would you?”
Tom scratched deeply and ferociously in his beard, which was black streaked with gray. “Oranges. Right,” he said in a neutral tone.
As Olga left, Rolf picked up his brown leather jacket and started to put it on. Tom wanted to grab the jacket away from him. Instead, he said, “Rolf, listen. This is important. It’s something we were going to see through together, all of us. I mean, we saw it start, we saw it grow—”
“And when the time comes, we’ll probably see it end,” said Rolf. He was arranging a yellow wool scarf around his neck, crossing it meticulously in an X over his chest.
“Maybe so. But that doesn’t make it less important.” Anger throbbed behind Tom’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted Brian in the group at all, much less Sally. Those two had been Jean-Pierre’s doing, but to reject them would have been to lose Jean-Pierre. With so much time and energy invested, Tom had had to make the best of it.
Rolf zipped his jacket. “What are you going to do when they arrive? Sing ‘Here Comes the Bride’?”
Francine closed Being and Nothingness, marking her place with her finger. “Don’t act like an idiot, Rolf,” she said, her French-accented voice husky. “You understand very well what Tom is talking about.” She shook back her dark, frizzy hair. She had brown eyes, a faint mustache over her top lip.
Rolf smiled slowly, coldly. “I understand what he’s talking about, and I’ve waited half the afternoon, and that’s long enough.”
Francine put her book down and stood up. She walked to Rolf, slipped her arms around his waist, pushed her pelvis against his. “Oh, Rolf. Don’t go, Rolf,” she said in playful entreaty.
Rolf’s face flushed. He put his arms around her and bent to make gobbling noises against her neck. She shrieked with laughter, and the two of them took a few staggering steps and collapsed on the couch, where they rolled, giggling, in breathless mock battle.
Tom took his glass and moved to the window, looking out over the leafless trees, the curving gray mansard roofs, the billboards advertising Renault, Coca-Cola, Credit Lyonnais. He shivered. Francine’s screams were subsiding into softer cries. The doorbell rang.
MADAME BERTRAND
Sally had gone back to the apartment, finally, because she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. The weeks that followed passed in numbing cold. She put on layers of clothes and took l
ong, aimless walks, or lay on the couch listening to the yapping of Bijou, the excitable fluffy white dog that belonged to Madame Bertrand, the concierge.
Sally believed Madame Bertrand knew what had happened. Whenever Madame Bertrand pulled her lace curtain back to peer at Sally as she crossed the courtyard, Bijou barking frenziedly inside, Sally thought she detected scorn in the way she dropped the curtain and turned heavily away, back to the huge television set she watched all day.
It seemed to Sally that her own body was disgusting. When she bathed in the deep, claw-footed tub, she averted her eyes from her small breasts with their anemic-looking nipples, her skinny, bluish-white flanks, her unappetizing light-brown triangle of pubic hair. No wonder Brian had fallen in love with somebody else. Although, really, she couldn’t convince herself that Jean-Pierre’s stocky body would look that much better than hers.
Brian continued to live with her, although he spent much of his time with Jean-Pierre. His attitude toward her varied from extravagant concern to exasperation. When he was exasperated, he spoke in distinct, measured tones.
“What I’m asking you, Sally, is what you think you might want to do.”
Gazing at the knuckle of her right thumb, she said, “I don’t know.”
She felt him lean toward her. “Well, what do you want? Can you tell me what you want?”
“No.”
His face contorted, and she felt a flicker of satisfaction.
He wanted her to keep seeing the group. Sally didn’t know why, unless he felt guilty at leaving her by herself so much. It certainly wasn’t because she liked the group, or they liked her. They didn’t even seem to like each other very much. Sally supposed they were together because of Tom, who used to be famous, although Sally was uncertain what he had been famous for.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 41
