Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  I had given up hope of finding Margot after inquiries at her school and the Harvard alumni office proved futile. The Internet now offered new ways to find people. My assistant was an adept, and I asked him to search for Henry first. When he found nothing, I asked him to go through the process again, for Margot, using her maiden and her married names. Again, he reported failure. There were people, he said, who conscientiously took all the steps required to shield themselves from search engines. A new wave of discouragement came over me. Then I remembered Henry’s account of his reconciliation with Margot and her telling him that she wouldn’t even try to persuade Radcliffe to readmit her. She would go to Sarah Lawrence. I had been looking in the wrong place. Less than two weeks later a letter—a telephone call to Sarah Lawrence had proved insufficient—produced Margot’s address in California. She was living in La Jolla. The college claimed to have no telephone number. I tried information and was told the number was unlisted. I wrote promptly, explaining how hard it had been to find her and asking whether she could direct me to Henry. Her answer reached me some weeks later. It was to the effect that she wasn’t sure whether she could or should help. Did I ever come to California? If I did, we might discuss face to face what could be done. She gave me her telephone number. I called the day I received the letter, and a week later I drove a rented car from the Los Angeles airport to the lemon grove above which stood Margot’s house.

  A coarsened Margot gave me her cheek to kiss. Her mouth was puckered. She was literally long in the tooth. What hadn’t changed was her bearing: she had the posture and agility of a young girl. A late lunch was served on the terrace.

  I expected her to speak about Henry right away, but she said nothing. It occurred to me that she might want first to talk about herself. I asked her to tell me something about what her life had been. So many years had passed.

  Fair enough, she said. I certainly don’t need to ask what you’ve been up to. The press keeps me up to date on all that. All those photographs, all those profiles—what a star you have become.

  Then she told me that Jean had surprised her: when she left him to go to California with Steve—that was the filmmaker’s name—she was sure that she would face an uphill fight over custody, French courts as a rule favoring fathers, especially if the father is French and the mother isn’t. It turned out, however, that Jean wasn’t interested in little Henry at all—if the price was right. She paid him an amount that she supposed made her son the most expensive child ever. Of late, she had been wondering whether she hadn’t overpaid. Those fights over who gets to keep the kid are pretty silly, she said. A few years pass, the kid is no longer a kid, and, in six cases out of ten, he is more attentive to the parent who didn’t care much about him or didn’t treat him all that well. There is a hidden principle of justice in this, she said, but I haven’t been able to distill it.

  By the way, she added, the prize for being attentive goes to the absent godfather Henry White. He opened an investment account for my Henry when he was born, and ever since not one of his birthdays has passed without a big check being deposited in the account. But only money; never a word or other sign of life. I know, because I ask him.

  So he’s alive, I exclaimed.

  Ah yes, she said, at least I assume he is. Somehow I think that if he had died Henry the younger would have received something even more substantial. Or some indication about his prospects.

  Tell me how I can find him, I said.

  Why? she asked. I’d be giving away his secret. The only memento I have.

  He was my best friend, I answered. It’s late in our lives. I would like to see him again.

  And then I told her about the failed attempts George and I had made over the years.

  She thought for a moment and said that she didn’t have his address and hadn’t tried to obtain it, but could tell me enough so that some simple research would lead me to it. But hadn’t I meddled enough in Henry’s life? Didn’t I understand that I was as much to blame as she?

  For what? I asked.

  Don’t you know even that? It’s so simple, she replied. You and Archie taught him all these tricks. Like a bear in the circus. Archie not so much—even if deep down Henry sometimes liked him better, you were the one he took seriously, you were what he wanted to become, you with a little of your Cousin George thrown in. That odious troglodyte! Why didn’t you all leave him alone? Why did you help him become an honorary Aryan? Why did you encourage him to keep after me? I was stupid to thank you for it that time in my ridiculous little apartment. He would have been better off with a girl more like him, one of his own kind.

  Rubbish, I said, and asked whether she imagined that anything short of the Nuremberg laws could have kept Henry from his own sort of Americanization. And had she ever met any of Henry’s kind? It was his own opinion in fact that no such kind existed. You’re talking like Mrs. White.

  Mrs. White was right, she replied. You and I and Harvard corrupted her little boy. It would have been better if he had stayed away: stayed away from you and from me.

  Her eyes filled with tears. I took her hand and said we’ve talked about this before, but why, why in the world did you and he not make a go of it? You had so many second chances, even in Paris, when things didn’t go well between you and du Roc. Henry was right there, yours for the taking. You did love each other.

  Love, she said, love wasn’t the problem or the solution. Perhaps we could have had a marriage of convenience with sex thrown in—that’s what my poor father would have recommended, not that we ever discussed it. But it wouldn’t have been physically satisfying for me, I told you that so long ago. That never changed. But he changed.

  She stopped, bit her lip, and said, Is it possible that there is one thing that you don’t know about what went on between us? You really don’t know what he did?

  I told her I truly didn’t know what she was talking about.

  All right, she said, I’ll tell you, just to make sure you have a complete dossier. I’m not completely crazy, you know, so eventually, when I knew I would have to leave Jean sooner or later, I thought of the marriage of convenience. I proposed it to Henry, though not in those words, I proposed to him nicely, to an old friend, an old lover, the man who’d been screwing me since I was nineteen up to and including right then. You do know that both before little Henry—I had been amused to notice that she actually pronounced it Henri—and afterward we kept on having our old five to sevens or whatever other hours he happened to be free, and that I could manage. But I guess you don’t know, but maybe you do—he told you the damnedest things—how he answered my proposal. You really don’t? Well, here is what he said: We’ve gotten old, Margot, you’re past the age when we could have had a child together. We’re doing fine as we are. You could have knocked me over with a feather. But then, as though nothing had happened, he unbuttoned my dress, undid the snaps of the bra, and put my hand on his erection. That’s when I slapped his face—really hard—for the second time in his life. And you know what he said then? I’m sorry you take it like that. I thought I was stating the obvious. And here’s one more tidbit, to complete the picture. I took his hand and kissed it. Because we were equally at fault.

  What a waste, I said.

  Of course, she answered, if I had been different, less capricious, less nihilistic, if I hadn’t needed—anyway, wanted—those other men. But if I had been different, would he have become hooked? Until he couldn’t do without me? We should have gotten together while he was still in law school.

  That would have been best, I said.

  She shook her head and said, What a square you are. All right, I didn’t marry him but I served him in other ways, and I don’t just mean free sex. Though I kept that up with him as well, while I had other men, and when I was married to Jean, not only because I enjoyed it but because that was the one thing he wanted that I knew I could give him.

  Margot, I asked suddenly, because I thought I had understood her, did you tell him how he got the job at Wiggin
s or did he figure it out?

  You know about that too?

  I nodded.

  Did he tell you?

  Oh no, I said, I began to think that there might have been something of the sort because of an offhand remark you made at lunch. I wasn’t sure whether you had blurted it out unintentionally or were trying to give me a hint.

  Unintentionally, she told me, unintentionally, that business was between that man and me, and I never told Henry. Sure, I teased him about his great patron and mentor, because he was always telling me these marvelous things Jim had said and done. Perhaps I overdid it. Or perhaps poor Jim let something slip out during all those hours and hours they spent together working, though I wonder whether that’s possible, Jim was so careful, kept each thing in its own little compartment. But one day I realized that Henry knew or almost knew. Something to the effect that he would never forget that he was in my debt. I began to feel that the knowledge gnawed at him, but there was really nothing I could do about it. We’ve never discussed it.

  I nodded.

  She opened another half bottle of wine and poured me a glass. We drank in silence until I returned to the purpose of my visit and said that I hoped she would tell me how I could reach him. She assured me she had told the truth when she said that she didn’t have his address, but, in the end, gave me all I needed to know. Henry White had transformed himself into Henri Leblanc, and he lived not far from Avignon.

  How did you find out? I asked.

  She laughed and said that during those five to sevens there are also moments when one rests and talks nonsense about what isn’t and what might be.

  A NEW MINITEL SEARCH yielded Henri Leblanc’s telephone number and address in a village southwest of Avignon. I didn’t think it would be any use to call him in advance. Instead, I flew to Paris, rested for a couple of days, and took the high-speed train to Avignon. By five in the afternoon I was at the station. There was a café across the street and I called from there. He answered the telephone in French, but there was no mistaking his voice. Henry, I said, I am less than thirty minutes away from you. That gives you just enough time to get out some ice. I’ll want a pastis after my train ride.

  There was a long hesitation. Then he said, in English, I asked you not to do this.

  Never mind all that, I answered. That was long ago. I’m here now and I want to see you.

  After another hesitation he said all right and dictated the directions.

  The taxi deposited me at a large bastide. He came to the door, and I was relieved to see that he hadn’t changed much, except that his hair had gone from red to an odd shade of blond. We shook hands and then—as though he had been struck by the formality of the greeting—he held out his arms and embraced me.

  I’m glad you’re here, you old rascal, he said, come in. Let’s sit on the terrace on the other side of the house. Mireille will be home soon. I had better clue you in so you won’t say anything stupid. But first I’ll see about that pastis.

  He went into the house and returned minutes later followed by an old lady dressed in black who brought the drinks. We sat down, and he told his story with the seriousness and concision I had known so well.

  He had bought the house three years after he became a partner—bought it for a song and spent considerably more, a sum that was for him then a fortune, on restoring it. The idea was to have a hideaway from everyone, including Margot and me, and everything. Once the work on the house was done, he came down as often as he could, which certainly wasn’t every weekend since at the time it was a five-to-six-hour drive over dangerous roads. Going by train for just a couple of days was impractical. Sometimes he cooked for himself and sometimes he went out to a restaurant, and, when he went out, he liked company. He fell into the habit of inviting the real estate agent who had sold him the house, a very young woman, really a girl, recently divorced, with two little boys. Then he fell in love. What to do about it tormented him, because she was not meant for the life of a Wiggins partner’s wife, in Paris or New York, and she had no intention of uprooting the children. That would have been, in any event, impossible because of the custody rights of the father, who lives in Aix. At the same time the feelings he had about the fundamental falseness—no, hideousness—of the life he led, which he had expressed to me with so much feeling at our last dinner, were percolating. How he would have resolved the conflict between Paris and the need to be near Aix if Hubert hadn’t proved such a prick he couldn’t really tell. Probably he would have cobbled together some weekend husband arrangement, but, knowing himself and Mireille as a couple as well as he did now, he was certain it wouldn’t have worked. Neither of them would have put up with such constraints. The kick in the ass arrived just in time. Within months they were married. They had one child together, a boy now in the lycée in Avignon. I would see him, because Mireille was picking him up on her way home from work. She insisted on working—real estate in the region was booming—and he had helped her financially to open an agency of her own.

  It’s a terrific business, he said, the best thing I could have done with that money. The odd consequence is that it has gotten me into the part-time practice of law. Mireille thought it would be unhealthy for me to sit around at home all day reading books and playing with little Sam while she worked. As a majority of her clients are foreigners—I mean not French—she came up with the idea that I might give them tax advice on setting themselves up in France in a way that works well here and in whatever country they’re from. That happens to be something I know how to do exceedingly well. The result is that I have a five-star clientele of international oddballs. I call myself a conseil fiscal, tax counsel, which I have a perfect right to do.

  Henry, I said, you sound pretty happy, you look happy too. Are you? Is this the life you wanted?

  He smiled at me benignly. I am very happy, he told me. Two-thirds of it is Mireille, one-third is Sam, and then, as a dividend, I have all this. He made a gesture encompassing the house, his olive trees, the hills on the horizon, perhaps the entire world. It’s wonderful here, don’t you think? And for the first time I am absolutely myself. Leblanc is no more my name than White, but everyone here knows that I wasn’t born Leblanc and no one cares. Although my French is easily as good as my English, people realize that I am a foreigner. That defines me. There’s nothing to explain; no one to betray. I’ve behaved well here, and I’ve been treated with great discretion and indulgence. When I don’t feel like eating what Madame Susanne wants to prepare for lunch, I take my bicycle and go to the café in the village. I even play pétanque with the locals. Finally a use for what I learned during my rare visits to a bowling alley in Brooklyn. They are glad to have a pastis with me after the game, and they don’t ask any questions. If they did, I’d tell them the truth. Simplified perhaps, but still the truth.

  And what happens when you meet Americans? Aren’t you likely to run into Americans in this practice of yours, even people who might know you?

  It hasn’t happened yet, but if it does, and someone recognizes me, I’ll deal with it. It isn’t as though I’d escaped from Devil’s Island! By the way, you’ve received my letters, haven’t you?

  Yes. But I couldn’t thank you for them.

  In the future you will.

  And you called him Sam.

  Yes, he answered, and smiled.

  Henry, I asked, why did you have to cut yourself off from me, from George, from your friends and partners, why have you done this to people who cared about you so much?

  He became very serious. You had all been my accomplices, always busy aiding and abetting. There was no leaving my old life of crime with you at my side. I had to leave you behind.

  He stopped speaking and listened. I listened too. It was the sound of wheels on the gravel.

  It’s Mireille, he said. She knows all about me and a great deal about you, including your novels. I am so glad that you will finally be able to meet her. Briefly. After that you’ll have to leave.

  She was short and cheerfu
l looking, with the kind of strong Mediterranean face one associates with the region, and lustrous black hair. Her laugh was like a young girl’s. Little Sam was as tall as his father. He had his mother’s coloring. We talked pleasantly for a few minutes and then I said that I must go. Henry asked where I was staying. In Villeneuve, I told him. In that case, he replied, Sam will drive you.

  Night had fallen. As Sam and I walked to the car, I looked up at the sky. It was full of stars.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Louis Begley lives in New York City. His previous novels are Wartime Lies, The Man Who Was Late, As Max Saw It, About Schmidt, Mistler’s Exit, Schmidt Delivered, and Shipwreck.

  Also by Louis Begley

  SHIPWRECK

  SCHMIDT DELIVERED

  MISTLER’S EXIT

  ABOUT SCHMIDT

  AS MAX SAW IT

  THE MAN WHO WAS LATE

  WARTIME LIES

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2007 by Louis Begley

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Begley, Louis.

  Matters of honor / Louis Begley.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Harvard University—Students—Fiction. 2. Nineteen fifties—Fiction. 3. Jewish college students—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Antisemitism—Fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.E373M38 2007

  813’.54—dc22 2006046581

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.