To Capture What We Cannot Keep

by Beatrice Colin

  “Monsieur Nouguier,” she said. “I like the idea of this tower. But tell me, what is its purpose? Is it for show? For spectacle?”

  The moment seemed to slow down, impossibly, but unmistakably. She seemed to be querying more than logistical justification.

  “It’s lightness and air,” he replied, “completely open to the elements.”

  “It’s not serious, then? A huge toy, perhaps?”

  He frowned. What was she suggesting?

  “If you want to look at it like that,” he agreed. “But the fact is that it is not trying to be anything other than what it is. Nothing is hidden and the reverse is also true; nothing in the city can hide. From the top on a clear day, you will be able to see everything. It will all be gloriously transparent.”

  “It’s what we want, isn’t it?” she said. “Transparency. One so rarely finds it.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  What was she telling him? He pulled at his collar. The room was stuffy. Without another word, she rose and took three small paces to the window. As she struggled with the latch, he put down his cup and saucer and stood up. He wanted to assist, that was all, he told himself later, to help her open the window. But before he reached her, she turned around, her head and upper body in silhouette against the muted colors of the garden, like a photograph taken against the light.

  “You should know, Monsieur Nouguier,” she said in French, “that my employer, Mr. Arrol, has the greatest respect for you and your work.”

  “The feeling,” he said, clearing his throat, “the feeling is mutual.”

  “And he would like stronger ties,” she went on.

  His eyes ran over her face, back and forth as he tried to read it.

  “I see,” he said.

  “And how is Jamie’s work?”

  Émile paused. What he could he say? He was about to let him go, to dispense with his services.

  “Good,” he lied.

  “Good?”

  “He needs supervision,” he said. “But we’re getting there.”

  She looked relieved, then turned and opened the window. A blackbird began to sing in a tree outside.

  “Life has been difficult since my husband’s death eight years ago. . . .” She paused and began again. “Mr. William Arrol has been very kind to me. I’ll write and tell him today.”

  Émile had the feeling that, just as he had, she had given away more than she’d intended, not only in her words, but also in the way she said them.

  “Please,” she said in English. “Please sit down. Have some cake. Alice chose it.”

  The cake was made of macaroon and raspberries—a beautiful confection topped with spun sugar. Émile raised a forkful to his mouth but could not eat. His appetite was gone.

  “He’s out!” announced Miss Arrol when she returned. “And I told him you were coming! He must have forgotten. Now it’s only me, I’m afraid.”

  Outside, the skies had clouded over and it had started to rain, a sudden summer downpour.

  “Why are you both sitting in the dark? And who opened the window?” Alice continued. “There’s a fearful draft!”

  A lamp was lit and the window closed again. Émile talked to the Arrol girl, about the weather and about Paris, but his eyes were drawn back once and then once again to the woman he had met in the balloon.

  “Have you heard of some artists called Impressionists?” Alice asked him.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “Are their paintings as shocking as everyone says they are?”

  “I rather like some of them,” Émile replied.

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Anyone can see them. They have exhibitions.”

  “Where? When?”

  “I know of one that will open in the autumn,” he said. “It is not showing well-known painters such as Monet and Renoir but some of the lesser-known ones.”

  Miss Arrol turned to Mrs. Wallace, and then back to Émile.

  “Really?” she said.

  And then he realized that he had talked himself into a corner where the only way out was an invitation.

  15

  ____

  “WELL, THAT WAS A WASTE of time,” Alice said once the engineer was gone. “And he didn’t eat any of his cake. Wasn’t that rather rude?” And then she picked up her skirts and headed toward the parlor, closing the door behind her.

  Cait stood and listened to the sounds of the house, to the bad-tempered clatter and slap from the kitchen, and the sound of the rain on the roof. To be standing alone in the hallway seemed suddenly fitting, a metaphor for who she was, stuck between floors, between rooms, between youth and old age, a person without status, without a husband, without a future. Was this living or merely waiting for the inevitable?

  There was a small knock at the front door. The housekeeper was busy downstairs and so Cait opened it. Émile Nouguier stood on the steps, his face, his hair, and his shoulders wet through.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you again,” he said. “But I think I left my hat.”

  The coat cupboard was next to the front door. It was lit by a pane of glass that let in borrowed light from the hallway. She told herself that it was just the chill in the air that made her hands shake as she looked through the pile of hats on the rack, the bowlers and boaters; she supposed it was the sound of the rain that made her shiver as she searched through the straw hats and the claques that the previous occupants had left behind.

  “What kind of hat was it?” she asked. “Is this it?”

  She held out a top hat. The engineer stepped into the closet behind her and examined it.

  “Let me try it on,” he said.

  It was, however, too small.

  “Maybe that one?” he said, pointing to another.

  She lifted the hat off its hook and held it out to him. He reached out with both hands to take it. For a moment he was looking directly at her. In the hall they both heard the housekeeper’s clogs on the stairs. And then the light in the hall was extinguished and they were left in the half dark.

  “This one?” he said softly as he pulled the hat, and her, toward him.

  She was so close to him that she could smell his soap. She was so close she could feel his hot breath on her skin as his face traveled up and down the curve of her neck. If I can’t see him, does it count? she asked herself. If he doesn’t touch me, does it mean anything?

  “Mrs. Wallace!” shouted Alice from the parlor. They heard her open the door into the hallway and come out. A shaft of light spilled through the glass above and into the closet. All around their heads the air danced with dust motes like tiny flakes of silver snow. Cait opened her mouth to answer. The engineer gave his head a tiny shake. Maybe he was right. What would she say? How could she explain if Alice found her here, alone in the closet with the engineer? Alice called out again and then, to her relief, she clattered up the stairs.

  Once she had gone, Cait was aware that they were standing only inches apart, with only a hat between them, and that Émile Nouguier was looking straight at her. She knew the right thing to do was to pretend their conspiracy of silence had never happened; she knew she must let go. And yet still she let the moment stretch until it could stretch no further.

  “This one?” she asked, and let go of the hat.

  Émile swallowed, then placed it on his head.

  “Nice,” he whispered. “But unfortunately not mine either.”

  She started to survey the hooks, looking rapidly through coats and jackets and scarves and stoles, through all the garments the owners of the house had left behind, riffling through places where a top hat could not possibly be. But it was preferable to turning around.

  “Well,” she said, “I can’t see any other.”

  The house was completely still as they stepped out of the closet. At the front door he bade her goodbye once more. She couldn’t meet his eye.

  “I’m so sorry about your hat,” she said softly.


  He leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

  “I just remembered,” he said. “I wasn’t wearing one.”

  16

  ____

  THE CARRIAGE STOPPED OUTSIDE a large mansion on the rue de Berri. From the street you could hear the chatter of people’s voices and the soft chime of glass and crockery.

  “We won’t stay long,” said Eiffel. “It’s bound to be tedious.”

  “I’m surprised you agreed to come,” said Émile.

  “I’m surprised the baroness invited me,” he replied.

  “Monsieur Eiffel?” called out a woman’s voice as they were handing their coats to the English butler. “Where have you been? You’re late!”

  The baroness stood on the stairs as if she had been waiting for them.

  “My dear,” he replied with a bow, “may I offer my sincerest apologies?”

  “I should think so,” she scolded as she came down the stairs to greet Eiffel. “You had better have a good excuse.”

  “Foolproof,” he replied.

  “I am sure it is.” She laughed.

  “First, may I present my most esteemed colleague, Monsieur Émile Nouguier?”

  She turned as if noticing him for the first time. Then she raised her chin, smiled, and offered her hand in greeting. Following Gustave’s example, Émile leaned down and gave her hand a small perfunctory peck. It was cold and dry and smelled of Pears soap.

  “Everyone is dying to meet you!” the baroness said to Eiffel as she took him by the arm and led him up the stairs. “You’re the star of tonight’s little salon.”

  The baroness wore her wealth lightly. Judging by her mansion it was considerable. Like many of her social class, she rarely went out into the city, but instead could afford to bring the city to her. Invitations to her salons were highly prized. As well as wonderful food and excellent wine, it was a sign that you had been noticed, that you were of some cultural value.

  The corridor she led them along was candlelit. On the walls, between the mirrors, hung a series of large portraits. Painted in the previous century, they depicted men and women whose poise and dress had been captured in oil as sheer as their own reflection.

  “My husband’s ancestors,” she said with a wave of her hand toward the portraits. “Mine are all in the Louvre.”

  In the ballroom, three young women had arranged themselves decoratively on a divan, like a floral centerpiece on a table. They were vastly out­numbered by men, who perched on chairs or who stood awkwardly around the edge of the room. Some of them were expensively dressed, in silk waist­coats and wing collars, with canes and monocles, while others wore dusty suits and paint-splattered boots, stained morning coats and shoes without socks. The cumulative effect was of a group of strangers on a railway plat­form. All of them looked as if they were waiting for something to happen, for the evening to begin, for the small talk to finish, and for someone to say something interesting.

  A long table down one side of the room was laid out with bowls of grapes, nuts, and figs. Canapés almost too beautiful to put in your mouth—curls of smoked salmon and jeweled tomatoes, shimmering beads of Black Sea caviar and quail eggs in aspic—had been arranged on huge porcelain platters.

  “Please eat,” the baroness commanded. But no one came forward. No one dared be the first.

  “She is the great-granddaughter of Napoleon,” Gustave whispered as he lifted two glasses of Champagne from a tray. “Her husband was a banker. She hated him and is said to be madly in love with her half brother, unrequited.”

  They both glanced across at the baroness. She wore a lilac satin dress, pearls in her ears and in strings around her neck and wrists. As if aware of their gaze, she turned and gave Gustave a smile. Her eyes, Émile noticed, were an unusual color, dark but closer to purple than brown.

  “She seems very fond of you,” Émile said.

  “She collects people,” Gustave explained. “Painters and musicians and architects.”

  “No,” Émile continued, “I mean more than that.”

  Gustave shook his head.

  “That will never happen,” he said simply.

  “What do you mean?” Émile asked. “Why not?”

  “My dear boy,” he replied as he sipped from his Champagne glass, “we may be able to span huge ravines with iron, but in France, men like us, professional men, no matter how wealthy, still cannot cross the social divide. We can marry young women of adequate means, however; in fact we must marry them young, start with a clean slate, so to speak.”

  “You make marriage sound like the purchase of stationery.” Émile laughed.

  “Not a bad analogy.”

  “Surely it’s changing.”

  “Maybe,” Gustave agreed, “but not fast enough for us. Or him, although he is too foolish to realize it.”

  Gustave’s attention was drawn to the door. Émile turned to follow the line of his gaze. A young man strode in with a riding crop in one hand and a top hat in the other. The women stopped talking. At least two of them blushed. Without acknowledging anyone, he picked up a glass of Champagne, gulped it down in one swig, and then went straight to the food and began to help himself, gouging mounds of glittering jelly and heaping roe onto his plate.

  “The brother?” asked Émile.

  “That’s the one,” said Gustave.

  “And the young women?”

  “Suitable matches, I expect,” he said. “Take a look. Any take your fancy?”

  Émile smiled but did not look.

  “I say!” said Gustave. “Do I take it that you have finally taken the plunge?”

  Émile laughed. “There is someone,” he replied. “But we’ll see.”

  Gustave appraised him. “The harder the chase, the greater the prize, in my opinion.”

  “Clément!” the baroness called out. But her brother’s mouth was so full that he could not return the greeting. Once he had swallowed, she kissed him on both cheeks and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, then turned back to help himself to more food.

  “He has been out riding in the Bois,” the baroness explained as she surveyed her ruined spread. “The fresh air gives one such an appetite.”

  Good looks in the family had obviously been distributed unfairly. While the baroness was handsome, rather than beautiful, her younger brother had the full mouth and large, long-lashed eyes of a girl.

  “What does he do?” Émile asked.

  Gustave stared at Émile and blinked twice. “Do? He’s an aristocrat,” he replied. “He gambles his parents’ money. He fucks his way around Paris.”

  “I thought we had got rid of all of them.”

  Émile’s last sentence was uttered in a whisper. The baroness and her brother were approaching.

  “May I introduce—” she began.

  “So you’re the man who’s ruining my view,” the young man said without waiting for her to finish. He grinned widely, but it wasn’t entirely clear he was joking.

  “Maybe you will change your opinion once the tower is completed,” Gustave said.

  “I doubt it,” he replied. “I hear it will soon be visible from all over Paris. A calamity, in my opinion.”

  “Is that so?” said Gustave.

  “It is. If I had my way I’d pull it down tomorrow.”

  There was a small, tense silence. Everyone in the room had stopped talking and was listening to the conversation.

  “Ignore him,” said the baroness in an attempt to smooth away any awkwardness. “My little brother is a philistine. He doesn’t like anything under a hundred years old.”

  “Apart from women, obviously,” he said, and glanced across at the divan. “So what’s it called, this tower? Something saintly, I expect.”

  Gustave put down his glass.

  “Actually it’s called the Eiffel Tower,” he said softly.

  “What or who on earth is Eiffel?”

  “I am,” he said. “I am Eiffel, Monsieur Gustave Eiffel.”

  The count st
ared at him. “Really,” he said. “Is that allowed?”

  “It is,” he replied. “We live in a republic. This, I’m sure everyone in this room will agree, is the age of man?”

  It was the cue that the guests had been waiting for. As one, they turned to their neighbor to argue over Auguste Comte and Karl Marx. The baroness sighed with something approaching relief. The night had finally begun.

  Later, much later, when what was left of the canapés had congealed and silver jugs of coffee were being poured instead of wine, Émile noticed a commotion coming from the front door. It was remarkable not only for its volume but also due to the fact that nobody else took any notice.

  “I will not leave,” a man was shouting. “I will not go until I have seen that man. Where is he if he’s not here?”

  But Clément, as everyone in the salon knew, had left hours earlier with­out saying either farewell or where he was going.

  “How can such beauty be so intrinsically ugly?” Gustave remarked as they pulled on their coats to leave.

  17

  ____

  C AIT WALKED THROUGH the Parc Monceau, past beds of flowers and exotic trees from the Orient, which would keep blooming until the first frost. She came to the park when Alice was busy with French lessons or dress fittings. There she would wander for hours along the gravel paths, past the lily pond and the Egyptian pyramid. Or she would linger beside the carousel to watch children on the painted wooden horses as they slowly revolved to the grind of the barrel organ.

  The invitation from the engineer had just arrived. If they were available, his carriage would transport them to an exhibition opening the following week. Since he was working late he would meet them there.

  Sunlight lit up the trees. Like daubs of paint, the leaves were cadmium yellow, maroon, and burnt umber. She inhaled the scene, breathing in the smell of roasting chestnuts from the hawker’s stall and the sweet scent of the Percherons, the draft horses that pulled the double-decker omnibuses along the boulevard de Courcelles. Beneath it all, however, she could still taste the velvet darkness of the coat cupboard and sense the heady charge of the engineer’s proximity.