Haunting Paris

by Mamta Chaudhry

  When the outburst was over, her first thought was relief that Odile had not witnessed her weakness. Pathetic! But no more pathetic than the fact that she sometimes trailed the children to Île Saint-Louis and watched from a distance as they entered the iron gate with its ornate peacocks. Julien had chosen the apartment for practical reasons—close enough to rue de Bièvre that the children could walk there alone—but looking at Le Vau’s legendary mansions on either side, she felt it a second betrayal that he had installed his mistress at such a desirable address.

  Isabelle sat with the tapestry forgotten in her lap until Berthe came in, surprised to find her sitting in the dark. Isabelle tugged at the lamp cord, but turned her head away from the light. She did not wish the maid to notice her reddened eyelids, her tear-streaked face. With an effort she collected herself; she would not succumb to panic. That’s where the danger lay, just look at Odile, fearful and foolish, with expensive young lovers who mocked her behind her back. She had no intention of turning into Odile, she had too much pride for that.

  And all these years she’d handled herself comme il faut. But seeing Sylvie in the park, the old bitterness had come flooding back. Thirty years later, Isabelle still could not accept that Julien had turned his back on her, on the life they had built together, what a waste, what a terrible waste. And just as if he could still hear her, the reproachful words burst out: How could you? How could you?

  Ah, Isabelle, forgive me. I am grateful for all that you gave me, as much as it was in your power to give. But it wasn’t enough; only when Sylvie came unsought into my life did I realize that gratitude is not love. And it turned out that love was what I wanted. I did try, for your sake, for the children, to continue as we were. But in the end what drove us apart was stronger than what kept us together. It can’t have been easy for you, either, living with a man hollowed out by grief, the horror of what happened to my sister, to her family, casting a dark shadow on what you tried so hard to make a picture-perfect life.

  Sometimes, when I saw your head bent over your needlework, the lamplight reflecting off your golden hair, I thought maybe we had made it through, that your certitude would carry me along. You wanted to protect the children from the past and we agreed on a pact of silence. But the silence reverberated deafeningly within me. I never stopped looking for answers, even though there could be no answer, no excuse, no justification for what happened. Arsène tried to rationalize it, but Sylvie stared him in the face and gave no quarter. I think that’s when I first noticed her, really straightened up and took notice.

  Why does one fall in love with one person and not another? You might as well ask why this piece of music strikes a chord and not that one. Desire is a mystery the dead fathom no more than the living.

  I still see your perplexed face when I joked: “If one of us dies, I shall move to Paris.” And, after all, the joke is on me. I’m the one who died, only to find myself still in a city of light where I walk always in darkness, a shadow among shadows.

  Blinding spotlights recall me to the present as a bateau-mouche drones past, its polyglot commentary garbled by the wind, and I cannot distinguish which is the unreal vision, the flesh-and-blood life I once lived or this twilight inhabitation into which the outside world noisily intrudes.

  The lights from the boats sweep through the concierge’s lodge and the false dawn sets the caged birds chirping. “Hush, my angels,” says Ana Carvalho, as she looks at the invitation hand-delivered for Sylvie. Another recital, just the kind of thing Sylvie loves, but Ana knows she will not go, not alone. She would offer to go with Sylvie, but that kind of gloomy music depresses her, frankly; a bal musette now, that’s something else, she likes a bit of dancing as much as the next person. She wonders if the Americans would care to accompany Sylvie, but maybe they only like the mournful cowboy songs one hears on the radio.

  Instead of taking the invitation upstairs right away, Ana waits until Sylvie and the Taylors are both in the courtyard. Handing Sylvie the card, Ana Carvalho says, “Perhaps les Américains would like to accompany you?” Sylvie smiles. Could her prompting be any more transparent? But she holds out the invitation to Will and Alice and asks if they’re free to join her for the recital.

  “We’d love to,” says Alice. “Oh, wait, it says Tuesday. Sorry, I can’t, I’ll be on a conference call with my department.”

  Meetings at night, thinks Ana Carvalho, who’s all for working hard, but that’s carrying things too far. Then she remembers the time difference, and realizes of course it will be afternoon there, Alice’s colleagues will be working through lunch. That seems a bit excessive, too, but what can you expect from Americans, they are not reposeful people, their shops are open day and night, their television channels never shut down, no wonder they’re all rolling in money, just like the show Dallas, she’s completely hooked on it, never misses an episode.

  Sylvie says, “Another time, then.” She puts the invitation in her purse, thinking she must call Félix, come up with some excuse.

  But Alice turns to Will and says, “You’d like to go, though, wouldn’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  So that’s settled, then, thinks Ana Carvalho, as she goes back to watering the clivia.

  Will has been looking forward to the concert, a chance to study Sylvie at close quarters for an entire evening. She seems as enigmatic to him as the city, which holds its true nature in reserve, revealing itself in secret glimpses through gates that open only to the initiated. Will’s impression is confirmed when at the end of the street Sylvie turns left into an unmarked entrance. He must have walked by a hundred times without suspecting the existence of this neighborhood theater, an intimate space with three or four dozen seats at the most, too minuscule for a sloping floor, so each row of chairs has legs sawn to different heights, a solution that seems endearingly French.

  A young man sees them enter and hurries toward Sylvie, his bow tie askew. “Mademoiselle,” Félix says, “I’m so grateful you came.” He leads them to the first row, and as they take their seats Sylvie is thankful to have Will by her side. The first time she attended a concert with Julien, she had looked around apprehensively as if she might see Isabelle sitting by herself, and Julien, with his instinctive courtesy, would go and sit beside her. “Illogique,” he pointed out, because then he would leave Sylvie alone. Yet, after all, they never saw her; they did not go to the opera on opening night, when Isabelle was sure to be there, drawn more by the spectacle—the décor, the costumes—than the music. And Isabelle preferred Puccini to Mozart. One thing, at least, in which Sylvie could claim better taste.

  All thanks to Madame Wanda, of course, who had taken Sylvie’s musical education in hand. For her tenth birthday, Madame had invited her to a concert as a special treat. To this day, more than forty years later, Sylvie remembers the ride in Madame’s chauffeured car, the glorious view of the Eiffel Tower from the Palais de Chaillot, and once inside the packed hall the excitement that gripped her when Madame Wanda whispered, “Tonight we have a direct line to Beethoven. We’re going to hear Schnabel, who studied with Leschetizky, who studied with Czerny, who studied with the master himself.”

  Some years later her mother’s employer had arranged an audition with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. Sylvie felt her heart quail as the exacting teacher put her through her paces, then decisively shook her head. “The wrong temperament,” she said. Madame Wanda looked even more dejected than Sylvie, but Nadia Boulanger was right, the strain of performing before strangers would have made Sylvie ill, she was better suited to teaching and particularly adept with children. Parents started recommending her to their friends, and that’s how she came to the notice of Isabelle. But naturally, the piano lessons for Charles and Alexandra had come to an abrupt end.

  As the lights dim in the little theater, there is a last-minute flurry of people taking their seats, exhaling the final puffs of the cigarettes they’ve thrown away outs
ide, filling the hall with the sudden reek of smoke. Félix takes the stage and the audience, made up largely of friends and relatives, gives him an enthusiastic round of applause.

  “Thank you.” Félix bobs his head like a bird pecking seeds, “thank you all very much.” He clears his throat and says, “I’m very honored, and, as you can imagine, very nervous, that my teacher is here tonight. She has taught me all that I know about music, and much that I know about myself. Je vous remercie, mademoiselle.”

  Sylvie blushes at the applause and shrinks back against Will. But when Félix begins playing the barcarolle at breakneck speed, she leans forward intently. Too fast, she thinks, doucement, doucement, and as if he has heard her, he relaxes into the piece, and Sylvie nods, Better, yes, and she smiles approvingly at him when he brings his hands down in the final octaves.

  Hearing the rhythmic applause peculiar to Paris audiences, Félix gives another of his awkward bows and says, “When Robert Schumann heard the music of Chopin, he said Hats off, gentlemen, a genius. And Schumann was no stranger to genius himself, as you’ll hear in his Fantasy, Opus 17, inspired by the love of his life, Clara Wieck.”

  From the first notes, Sylvie is absorbed in the music, both a passionate declaration of love for Clara and a wrenching lament at their separation. Even when the piece ends, she sits there dazed, unable to join in the applause. She remains silent and pensive as she and Will walk back to the apartment, recalling the music’s epigraph: Sounding softly through all creation is an undying note for the secret listener. She feels a physical ache for Julien; that’s what he was to her, the pervasive note, the beloved listener.

  Sylvie crosses the street and looks down at the river flowing swiftly below, as Schumann must have looked at another river in another time, another place. In the grip of madness, Schumann had thrown himself into the Rhine, and when a boatman fished him out, he defiantly flung his wedding ring into the water. From the asylum where they took him, he wrote to his wife that she should do the same; at least there in the depths they would never be parted. Sylvie still wishes that during her own spell of madness she had taken the leap, had joined Julien in death. But the time for that is past, her days of unreason over. With an effort she turns to Will. “Did you enjoy the evening?”

  “I did, very much. Your pupil does you credit, but I wished it was you up on stage.”

  “Oh, no, the very thought makes me faint. Fabienne and I sometimes gave recitals together, and my bouts of stage fright before every performance drove her mad.”

  “Well, she certainly loves the limelight.”

  “Yes, she lives for it, the audience, the applause. But for me, the music itself is enough.” As they turn into the wrought-iron gate, Sylvie puts her hand on Will’s arm. “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, about the fear of transitions, do you remember? It suddenly occurred to me that in music, at least, a transition isn’t like closing a door but crossing a bridge; you remain connected to what has gone before even as you move into what is to come. If that makes any sense.”

  “Yes,” says Will, “it does, it makes perfect sense.”

  Hearing voices in the courtyard, Ana Carvalho parts the lace curtain at her window to look out and is gratified by the sight of Sylvie’s animated face, a long way to go yet, but at least there’s a glimmer of her old self.

  Back in her apartment, Sylvie finds a message on the answering machine from Charles, dear boy, checking up on her. He and his sister are both so attentive, so regular with their calls and visits. Alexandra had come in early May to help set up the apartment for the Taylors. Such a pity she left before the desk was moved and the folder came to light.

  It’s too late to call Charles back, but she knows he will be happy to hear of her “outing”; the children worry she is turning into a recluse. They take turns to come so that there isn’t too long a gap between visits, but she often wishes they would come together, it would be like old times.

  Sylvie still shudders when she recalls the awkwardness of the children’s first visit to quai d’Anjou, eleven-year-old Charles grave and polite, but his younger sister determined to fight Sylvie tooth and nail. And that day, of all days, Julien was held up at work and called to say he would be home late. Sylvie relayed the message to the children, and even as she said désolée, she knew she was apologizing not for his lateness but for something else entirely. Alexandra said furiously, “This isn’t home.” Sylvie didn’t blame her for her hostility. She asked if they would like to try out the new piano, but Alexandra glared and said no, nobody gave a fig for her stupid piano.

  Without a word, Sylvie put away the Clementi she’d placed on the music stand. Before their next visit, she went out and bought them a gramophone. From then on, she would hear them singing along with a favorite record as she came up the stairs—“on prend le café au lait au lit”—but as soon as she entered the apartment, they fell silent. Charles answered her questions politely enough, but Alexandra would respond in sullen monosyllables.

  Once Sylvie overheard Alexandra complaining to Julien, her voice shrill with indignation, “I don’t have to listen to her, she’s not my mother.”

  “At least make an effort. It’s hard for Charles, too, but he tries to be civil.”

  “We don’t have to love her just because you do.”

  “No,” he said, “you don’t. I know you’re angry, but don’t take it out on her, take it out on me, I was the one who left.”

  Sylvie had thought of staying behind for the Toussaint holidays so that Julien and the children could go on a trip by themselves, but Fabienne shook her head in exasperation. “Can’t you see that’s what the little beast wants, to get her father back from you?”

  “Don’t be so hard on her, she’s only eight.”

  “Old enough to know what she’s doing.”

  “She needs time alone with him.”

  “What she needs,” said Fabienne, “is a good slap.”

  Sylvie racked her brains for a way to reach Alexandra. She borrowed a couple of birdcages from Ana Carvalho and put them on the balcony. The children kept looking at the boldly colored finches, but when Sylvie asked if they wanted to feed them, Alexandra said no, nobody gave a fig for her stupid birds. Charles looked embarrassed by his sister’s rudeness and asked what they liked to eat.

  “Seeds and grains, mostly, but sometimes they like cuttlefish bones to grind down their food—they don’t have teeth, you know.”

  Charles held out some seed to the finches, and Alexandra scowled at his betrayal. All of a sudden she turned to Sylvie and said, “Don’t you have any birds that like to raid the nests of others?”

  Sylvie stood there in stunned silence. Before her brother could stop her, Alexandra wrenched a birdcage open and the finches streaked out, fluttering around the balcony. Sylvie managed to coax them back into the cage, all but one, which flew down to the judge’s window. It perched there, cheeping loudly for several minutes, and then sailed off toward the river.

  Alexandra said wildly, “There, you can tell Papa, I don’t care.”

  Seeing her tear-streaked face, Sylvie suddenly realized the girl’s fierce opposition was fueled not by anger but by fear. She took a deep breath and said firmly, “Stop it, Alexandra, it’s not a contest, your father loves you, he’ll always love you, but you should know that every time you lash out at me, you end up hurting Julien.”

  Both children looked at Sylvie in astonishment, and in truth she was somewhat surprised herself. But she did not want to draw Julien into these skirmishes, she must remedy the situation alone. She rearranged her schedule so that when their father was at work, she was free to accompany the children to the book stalls by the river, or to the cinema for the latest Jacques Tati film. At the end of the day, she and the children would stroll down the island’s main street to watch the fire-eaters and tumblers on the footbridge, and on the way back they would push o
pen the wooden door of Maison Chenizot to wait for Julien in the courtyard.

  In front of their father the children continued to address Sylvie as “vous,” but when they were by themselves, they used the less formal “tu.” One day Alexandra said that she would be home late, and then bit her lip as she realized she had called quai d’Anjou home. Their transformation into a family was so gradual that Sylvie could hardly say when things changed. But one winter night with Alexandra curled up beside her father and Charles playing a duet with her on the piano, Sylvie had the strange sensation that someone was staring into the lighted window yearning, as she had once yearned, to be part of that brightness.

  And now that brief enchantment was over, Julien gone, Charles and Alexandra far away, with children older than they had been when they first came to quai d’Anjou. Sylvie did not expect to see either of them till September. They always spent August in Vandenesse with their mother. She had often thought of them in Isabelle’s family home, imagining the soft green hills, the golden light of the Côte-d’Or.

  One summer, when the children were still young and away at Vandenesse, Sylvie had sighed that the apartment seemed so quiet without them, so empty. Julien looked up from his work, put it aside.

  “Chérie, do you want children?”

  “I have Charles and Alexandra.”

  “A child of your own.”

  She hesitated, considering the possibility of that great metamorphosis in her life. Would it shatter the fragile peace she had achieved with Alexandra, with Charles? “It’s the same thing,” she said, “they are my own.”

  “I love you even more than I thought. Much, much more.”

  And so I do.

  Even more than I can tell her now.