by Louis Begley
He nodded.
Well, it wasn’t quite like that with Léa, he said. With her, I entered the world of new sex. A good world. Perhaps the gray-beards are right to claim that her generation differs from ours in ways that ours does not differ from that of our parents. You see, to use my sometimes old-fashioned vocabulary, I had decided to seduce her. Therefore, so far as I was concerned, I was the stage manager of the seduction scene. It was supposed to be just as described. The truth is that she took over. No sooner had the elevator door shut behind us than she jumped me—quite literally, causing me to lose my balance and stagger against the wall. She took possession of my mouth, and straightaway began to knead the front of my trousers. Her fingers inserted themselves between the buttons of my fly, and then went for the fly of my shorts. It wasn’t a long elevator ride to the third floor, but she was a fast worker. Fortunately, I had a respectable hard-on, so that these imperious, marauding fingers found what they wanted. I fumbled with the key. She took it from me and opened the door of the suite. The accommodation, the box of chocolates, and the assorted soaps passed muster. With a triumphant Youpi—which soon became as familiar to me as the war cry of the daughters of Wotan—she hopped on the bed, pulled me on top of her, wiggled her pelvis so that one of my legs lodged between her legs, and began to writhe. I said, Léa, I want to see you and touch you, let’s take our clothes off. She shook her head vehemently. I got the point. She wanted a dry fuck. I think that’s what these simulations were called when I was a freshman in college, and perhaps they are today, if anybody still bothers. At the time, the point was that so long as the fellow kept his pants on and his pecker inside them the girl was safe. He wouldn’t knock her up.
We carried on with increasing vigor, our mouths fastened together, my hands hooking her armpits, her crotch rubbing against my leg, my crotch working up and down her thigh. She made a lot of noise, some of which could have meant that she was coming. Later, when I knew her better, I learned that shrieks were not to be trusted. I had to wait for the sudden silence followed by a sort of whine and a spasm that couldn’t be faked—not that she ever faked anything. Very soon, it no longer mattered to me at what station she was on the way to orgasm. I lost control and came like a fountain. That, by the way, used to be the added benefit of dry fucking from the girl’s point of view: the guy would get his load off without her having to give him a hand job, which some of those demi-vierges claimed to find revolting. I felt the stain spreading over my trousers. I couldn’t even try to pretend it hadn’t happened. The cat was out of the bag.
I thought she’d say something to console me and acknowledge that we had both become too excited playing around, but I was wrong. She got up from bed without a word, smoothed her clothes, pulled a hairbrush out of her huge pocketbook, and disappeared in the bathroom. Meanwhile, I surveyed the damage. The stain would come out in dry-cleaning, and I had better take care of it while I was still in this good hotel, even though some claim it’s advisable to wash it at once with cold water. The last thing I needed was to have our housekeeper see it when I got home. She might sniff at the stain to confirm her suspicion. Here, I could call for dry-cleaning service and leave the trousers on the bed just as I was going out. I would be spared the embarrassment of watching the valet examine the problem and draw his own conclusion. There was also, I noticed, more serious damage to my suit jacket: during our contortions the middle button had been torn out, with its roots, as it were. In its place was a small hole in the fabric through which showed the beige horsehair tailors insert to stiffen the front of the suit and the lapels. I found the button on the floor and cursed. Not on account of the hole—I was pretty sure that no magic weaving would be required; with a bit of care the chambermaid should be able to conceal it when she sewed on the button—but because, no longer feeling either sexual desire or the effect of the wine, I saw in the damage to my clothes a crude but apt demonstration of my stupidity. This young journalist had produced as good an article on my book and me as I could have wished for, and would have become a useful ally. I turned our meeting into a wrestling match with an incontinent satyr. She would remember me with contempt, and in the future I would have to avoid her. And who was to say that she wouldn’t talk? She might give an account of our evening to her friend Jacques Robineau, who would, in turn, say something about “those Americans” to Pierre or Marianne. Just enough for them to get the point. That would demote Lydia, in their eyes, to the rank of wives whose husbands cheat on them. I realized, of course, that a husband’s or a wife’s infidelity hardly impressed the Lalondes, not even as an amusing subject for gossip, but it mattered for Lydia. That was something they understood. Therefore, they also understood that, if she were to discover not only what had happened but also that they were aware of it, she would feel doubly humiliated: by my disloyalty and by her loss of dignity. She had always treated the Lalondes with confidence and affection, not because they were her sort but because they were my old friends. She would never want to see them again—even if she didn’t leave me. My childishness did not stop there. Suddenly I was sickened by the callousness of having so frivolously deprived her of something nice, a pleasure she so clearly deserved: the fun of watching the fuss that the media, my publisher, my agent, and our friends would have made over my book and the prize if I had, as my duty dictated, returned on the first plane to New York to receive their plaudits. I also withheld the pleasure she might have had of parading me before her normally condescending family. Interest in a literary prize is short-lived; the author has to be there to catch the wave and ride it. It might have been all right to turn my back on the hoopla if I had done so out of modesty or pride. But I had done so for the sake of tawdry adventure. I too had been humiliated by this girl, but the punishment was insufficient.
It seemed to me that, for someone presumably brushing her hair and putting on makeup in preparation for storming out of my room, Léa was taking a great deal of time in the bathroom. But perhaps there were other necessities of nature to which she needed to attend. It made no difference. I went into the living room, contemplated my spring bouquet on the coffee table—more grandiose and more absurd with each minute that passed—and lit a cigarette. Night had fallen. I opened the window and stared at the great square below, so empty at this hour, wishing “the scene with the girl”—that is how I had begun to think of it—to be over. As soon as she left, I would take one of the sleeping pills an Israeli doctor friend of Lydia’s had given me, the kind that knock you out like a baseball bat. So it was with a feeling of relief that I heard her knock on the door between the bedroom and the living room, which I had in fact left open. I turned toward it. Coucou,she called out, are you surprised? Indeed, I was. She was naked and shaking with laughter. Come on, she continued, stop looking so grim. I want it now, so I’m giving you another chance.
Lest you jump to the conclusion that she was forgiving in such matters, I must confess that during our subsequent copulations, often preceded by bouts of foreplay that drove me wild by reason of their duration, the marvels of her body, and her inventiveness, she was never to overlook an occasion—they were, alas, too frequent—when I didn’t manage to stay the course. She took to calling me by the initials P.E. (for this purpose she used the English term and pronunciation), told me to practice, and compared my lack of self-control with the power of some of her other friends, who were able to carry on indefinitely. Whether such supermen in fact existed, without some compensatory complications in their libido or performance, I had previously doubted, but Léa’s testimony was difficult to disregard. She was an objective observer, and certainly knew the field.
As the night went on I was to learn that, in addition to the daring and knowledge of a high-class whore, Léa had a whore’s gift for making a man feel that each thrust into her, and each surrender of her body to a new demand, was the willing sacrifice of a barely nubile virgin, a part of mysteries one imagined to have been performed at a temple in Greek Asia. This is just for you, she would murmur. I would wh
isper back, Why? Why for me? It’s to show that I belong to you, was the unvarying murmured reply. And her complaisant body was beautiful beyond anything I had imagined: she was a maiden of Sparta painted by Renoir after a mural by Puvis de Chavannes. Her small imperfections thrilled me. For instance, the feet that were a trifle fat, with chubby little toes, the long dark hairs surrounding the aureoles of her nipples, the ears that stuck out. At times she would ask me to stop moving. It hurts now, she would say, or, I want to think about how it was so I can remember when you start again, or, I am going to sleep now, take me while I am asleep. She slept profoundly but, if I entered her, she either awakened at once or, from some zone of other consciousness that I couldn’t define, offered herself even more fully. I could not deny that I had fallen in love.
And what of Lydia and my remorse? Had it been only a movement of pique and wounded self-esteem? I don’t think so. Lying by Léa’s side, watching the night sky turn pink and then gray again—I had opened the curtains to let in more air—it seemed to me, as I thought about Lydia, that I had been split in two. One half was Lydia’s husband, whose limitless and unreserved love for her was like a vital organ of his body. The other was an unserious man, besotted by this girl’s body and what she was willing to do with it, and, to be just, by her startling charm. Why couldn’t these men coexist, I asked myself, so long as I kept them apart, so long as Lydia never found out about Léa, and I succeeded in shielding Lydia even from the abstract humiliation of having others know? Coexist for a while, is what I really meant, because it was clear to me that, however irresistible I found Léa, our affair—what else was I to call it?—must have a limited term and limited importance. There were those other men, about whom I had not yet asked; there was her age, which made children her natural goal and marriage to me, even if I were free, questionable; there was my own selfish nature, which had always put me to flight from time-consuming unnecessary complications. I was sure that last consideration alone would keep me from wasting time which I needed for my work, or dividing what little of it was left over between a wife, whom I would not rob of her due, and a mistress. I have always admired Henry James’s Prince in The Golden Bowl; for a goodly period of time he was able to keep two women quite content. But the system broke down when he allowed the mistress to push him into an indiscretion that humiliated his wife. I would not allow that to happen to me.
She left me at seven, her mouth full of chocolates, her teeth brushed with my toothbrush. She would walk to her studio, she told me, and change into work clothes before going to the office. I stood at the window and watched her traverse with long strides the place Vendôme in the direction of the Tuileries. Perhaps I should have gone with her, across the garden, where the sand was still wet from the soft rain that had fallen during the night, over the passerelle de Solférino and down the rue Jacob until she reached St. Germain des Prés. She had already taken a shower in my bathroom. Changing at her apartment would be a matter of five minutes before she raced up the boulevard St. Germain to the place du Palais Bourbon. Unless, of course, she had telephone calls to make from home: to her real monsieur, to Robineau, or to her brothers, of whom I had learned she had two, both graduates of the Polytechnique. The elder had been working in the cabinet of the prime minister and the younger in the cabinet of the minister of industry. Their assignments in the new regime were uncertain. There must exist parents of these siblings as well, leading a very correct bourgeois existence somewhere or other, but she hadn’t mentioned them. How opaque her life seemed! For a moment I thought that I didn’t even have her telephone number. Then I remembered that it was on the business card she handed to me at the Flore. It had to be in the pocket of my tweed jacket.
We were to meet that evening for dinner at the Balzar. She said she liked bistro food better than the food served in the great restaurants I proposed, but rejected my suggestion of the Lipp, because she said everyone she knew was always there, checking on who would walk in with whom. She refused to have lunch with me. The reason she gave was that we would have to eat near the office—she had so much work—and wherever we went in the neighborhood we would run into her colleagues. She didn’t want people to gossip about her and a married American. Quite obviously, I was a trophy for a young journalist trying to specialize in cultural reporting and book reviews. That she didn’t want to show me off seemed an excellent sign. Paradoxically, I was also reassured by the identity of her principal monsieur,which she had revealed to me in bed during a pause. If a man of his standing had confidence in her keeping their secret, why shouldn’t I? It did not occur to me to take warning from this particular breach of confidence, or to ask myself how many other such breaches there had been. The revelation had come in a roundabout way. I said that Marianne had spoken of a lover she had other than Robineau, whose name she didn’t know, although it was known to Pierre.
Not at all, Léa protested, at most he knows there is someone in my life more important than Jacques. Probably Jacques told him. He can’t keep his mouth shut. I let Jacques fuck me from time to time, when Françoise is away, that’s all. Probably I shouldn’t, because he is—she hesitated before using the English expression—a son of a bitch. Is that what you say? I mean a salaud.You won’t believe it. For a long time last year he was after me to get my older brother to speak to Raymond Barre about making him the number one at the bank. Otherwise he’d stop sleeping with me. Naturally, I wasn’t going to do it, and anyway my brother wouldn’t have listened to me or would have pointed out that, after a request like that, the prime minister would show him the door. At the same time, this salaudsays I’m the best lay in Paris! Do you think he’s right?
I don’t know, I said, I haven’t done the research. But you’re good enough for me.
You know, I only sleep with Jacques because my great love is a married man like you, and we can’t be together very often.
And who is your great love? I inquired.
She made a face and said she couldn’t tell me. Then she changed her mind. Because it was I who had asked, she would tell me after all; it would be like the things we were doing—a sign that she belonged to me.
And what about him, your great love, I asked, still not knowing who he was, don’t you belong to him?
I do, she replied, but there is a difference: the me that I’ve given to you is not the same as the me that belongs to him.
I saw that she subscribed to my new theory of split beings, and had herself developed it considerably. It had not occurred to me that I could offer my body, still mine but quite chaste, to Lydia.
He is a French academician, she informed me, and pronounced the name of a celebrated winner of the Nobel Prize in physics. He’ll never leave his wife. Anyway, I wouldn’t want him to, he’s much too old for me to marry.
And what about me, I asked, what plans do you have for me?
You could have been my great love, she told me, but I met you too late. I don’t think you will ever leave your Lydia. You can be my lover and best friend and dance with me at my wedding.
Seeing that I was shaking my head at his narration, North stopped; he looked at me thoughtfully and said, At least you aren’t laughing at me to my face. You have every right to do so. All of this was foolish nonsense, but for the moment I believed it, and in fact continued believing it longer than should have been possible. But let me return to the rest of the stay in Paris. As I said, we were to meet at the Balzar. At nine-thirty, she specified. I should note that during the time I knew her, the hours at which we met grew progressively later. She blamed it on deadlines at the magazine, and also parties, plays, or the opera performances she was obliged to attend. Nine-thirty was all right with me, even ten. I like dining late. I was glad to be able to fill an additional hour or two with work or a drink with Pierre, and I told myself that Léa’s habits went very well with mine. By the way, so do Lydia’s: no lunch or dinner could ever be late enough for her, and a lifetime of hospital emergencies has made her very understanding of those times when a book was goi
ng badly and I wanted to stay at home and wrestle with it instead of going to a movie or when it was going so well that I could not bear to leave my desk. But the Balzar! That particular evening Léa arrived forty-five minutes late, at a quarter past ten. By then I had drunk two and a half whiskeys instead of the usual one drink before dinner, and kicked myself for not having brought a book to read. Even though the clientele of Balzar is less boring for a student of physiognomies than that of most restaurants, it was too much time to devote to the faces of my fellow diners, too much time during which to brood about my conversation with Lydia. I had called her in East Hampton and caught her, as I had expected, just as she arrived from New York. To invent what I had done the previous evening and what I would do during the evening that stretched before me was child’s play. I told her I had managed to buy a ticket for the Racine the previous evening. Not having seen the play did not interfere with the account I gave of it. This evening I would have dinner with my publisher. I chose him, because there was little chance that the subject would come up, even if Lydia and I saw Xavier together when we next came to Paris. Of course, I was working on my book, but I hoped to get to the Louvre. Perhaps even the Musée Guimet. It was not these lies, inconsequential in themselves, that broke my heart, but the contrast between my shabby behavior and Lydia’s unvarying goodness.
Do you find that I am succumbing to Victorian mawkishness? North asked abruptly.
I shook my head.
Apparently this didn’t satisfy him. He looked at me sternly and said, Be careful, my dear fellow. We are all in danger of succumbing to an excess of sophistication. Goodness of character and probity of conduct are precious and rare. Altogether too many of us—both writers and upright citizens like you— avoid naming them, so as not to seem naive. We shouldn’t: they deserve to be proclaimed from rooftops. Lydia, you see, had things to tell me that were about me and only me and she was so eager about them: the stories she had clipped from New York papers about the prize and the movie sale, other clippings that my agent and the publishing house had sent, people who had called to congratulate, what my sister and each member of her family had said, how her father had the New York Timesarticle blown up and pasted on a board and planned to display it during the Memorial Day lunch when they would toast me with vintage Krug, how I had made her very proud. It was only at the end of the conversation that I succeeded in worming out of her, through direct questions, that something far more important had happened concerning her career. The control-group study had been completed, proving beyond any question the validity of the treatment she had pioneered for infants fewer than eighteen months old. The New England Journal of Medicine was going to carry her paper. She put her success down to the simple power of inductive reasoning correctly applied and tested by the most commonplace scientific procedures. Not precisely proof of her creativity, she told me. I dwell on this instance of her modesty not only for its own beauty but to let you see how absorbed she was by my achievements and my happiness. She is the only person I have known whose wishing me well—always—I have never thought to doubt. Alas, as soon as Léa appeared in the door of the Balzar, my remorse receded. Where? Into that part of my brain—I suppose it would be more poetic to call it my heart—where I store my shame and the rest of the stuff I harangued Léa about, of which I make my books. How could it be otherwise? She was so immensely desirable, and I knew that after the two hours at most it would take to eat dinner and get out of the restaurant, her naked and obedient body would be in my hands. We’ll sleep at my place, she told me. I want to show it to you, and I want you to see my work. I am a painter, remember? Not only your whore. She was full of talk. About the magazine— everyone loved the piece about me, there would be one or two cuts, no other changes—about her best friend to whom she had described me as her new lover and perhaps a candidate for her new great love, and about her monsieur,who didn’t much like the news of my arrival on the scene, but too bad, what could he expect if he could see her only once a week, and about the opening at the opera the following week. It was Pelléas et Mélisande.She had two tickets, could I stay until Tuesday and go with her? I reminded her that I was leaving for New York, and forbore from confessing my dislike for that work. Then, perhaps thinking of the sublime fidelity of the incestuous lovers, she said that she would go on sleeping with the great physicist but would give up Robineau, whom she found more and more loathsome, puant. What about me, she wanted to know, did I have anyone else in New York? Or elsewhere? I reminded her of what I had said: she was my only adventure, and I expected to have no others. She agreed I had said that, but she meant to ask how I would manage when I wasn’t seeing her—when I wasn’t in Paris. It seemed ludicrous to have to say it, but I explained: I sleep with Lydia, I said. I like to sleep with my wife. Léa considered this information, and said, My great love doesn’t sleep with his wife. Really, I replied, even though they aren’t very old? Oh, perhaps I am mistaken about that, she replied, and then reassured me. They do it maybe once a year, on her birthday! And with you, I asked, once a week is enough for him? She told me it seemed to be, the great man wasn’t oversexed like her. Then she asked how often I slept with Lydia. When I told her that usually it was every night, she looked troubled. After a moment she said it was a real pity, because that made it impossible for me to become her great love, even if she were to leave the physicist.
