by Louis Begley
North paused and smiled. I fear I have shocked you, he said.
Not at all, I replied. Do go on, please.
I somehow think I have, said North. But I prefer to be wrong in this case, and to go on with my story. Over drinks, Pierre told me that he thought Marianne was seeing someone. He wasn’t sure of it; he had noticed, though, that she was treating him with a sort of bemused detachment, which was new in their relations. Also, she had announced that she would spend a week in London in June, alone, to see the new plays. It is true, he told me, that he doesn’t like the theater all that much, certainly not in English, which he can’t always follow, whereas she is passionate about it, so that it wasn’t unreasonable in principle for her to go to London without him. But she had never done such a thing before. He couldn’t help thinking there might be a link between the London expedition and her new attitude. On the other hand, if she was seeing someone, she didn’t need to leave town for that purpose. Both she and Pierre had such unpredictable work hours that she could manage any sort of tryst right here in Paris without lies and pretexts. But, he said, in these five-to-seven romances, there always comes a point when one party starts complaining about never getting to spend the night together. That could explain London, because to be in Paris and not come home for the night would be the same as declaring that she was having an affair and didn’t care whether he and Mélanie and her sister knew it.
That Mélanie was in danger of being hurt saddened me especially. You see, North said, as Mélanie’s godfather, I almost always think of some treat for her when I’m in Paris, something we can do together. This time I hadn’t. I asked Pierre how she was doing. She regretted, Pierre told me, not having been at home when I came to dinner, but she had promised her current best friend, whose parents were away, to sleep over at her apartment. He went on to tell me that Mélanie was very proud of her godfather. She was continuing to do well at school, and was beginning to go out with boys. That made another problem, he told me. Marianne and he had to enforce rules about whom she could go out with, where she could go on dates, curfews, and so forth. None of this would be any easier if Marianne’s mind were on other things, or if she took to setting a bad example by her own conduct.
I realized that Pierre was more upset than he let on, and that upset me too. He had married Marianne two years before I married Lydia; I was a witness at the wedding, on his grandparents’ property near Bordeaux. They had lived together for two or three years before that. I liked being with Marianne and Pierre. But when the wedding date was set, I could not help wondering what marriage to Pierre might imply for Marianne, by way of sacrifices she would have to make. Pierre, you must understand, had a very precise idea of the way a bourgeois household should be kept: exactly like his parents’ and grandparents’. It wasn’t clear to me how Marianne, the hyperactive television producer, was going to combine her professional ambitions with the duties attendant upon being Madame Lalonde. But, as I observed their marriage, it became clear that she managed it without stumbling. Her example, in fact, encouraged me when I began to think of marrying my hyperactive and incomparably gifted research doctor. Not that my ideas of how we should live were as elevated as Pierre’s! Our very much comme il faut existence all came from the Frank side of the family. So, as you can imagine, quite apart from my feelings for those two, which ran deep, the possibility that Marianne had wearied of Pierre, who was more handsome and ebullient than ever, and a spectacular success, having evolved from a specialist in eighteenth-century furniture with no money and no backing into a very prosperous and important dealer in modern art, might have a significant impact on my view of the characters in the new novel. Marianne’s own evolution into a hot screenwriter might have such an impact as well. She had gone further than could have been expected.
I asked Pierre whether the marriage still suited him. Perfectly, he told me. You know that I’m not a saint, and I haven’t become a prude like you. I have had little flings, all meaningless. A matter of having lunch with a girl at a hotel restaurant and then going upstairs to a room I had reserved beforehand. Or I might invite some young thing to come with me on a business trip to Geneva. For instance, that Morini girl, who came to dinner the other evening. It’s something that happened and was almost immediately forgotten. Sometimes when I see her I am at first not completely sure that I have slept with her, although I know perfectly well that I have. I haven’t anybody just now. In fact, these days I have no time to think about it.
I said I hoped he was wrong about Marianne, and that I would call him at the office to check in, once I got back to New York. Fortunately, we would be seeing much more of each other when I came to Paris to work on the filming of The Anthill.Ah yes, that reminds me, he said, the apartment on avenue Gabriel. It’s yours if you want it. My aunt Viviane loves your books and will be thrilled to have the author under her roof.
That was, I supposed, good news. As for the rest, why should it matter that Léa had slept with Pierre any more than that she was currently sleeping with the physicist, Robineau, and others for the time being unknown? I didn’t really care, except that after my first night with Léa I thought I had fallen in love. Had I told her? I didn’t believe I had, but I wasn’t completely sure. If I had, perhaps such declarations were so much a part of the routine that Léa hadn’t paid attention. Perhaps they weren’t. In that case she must think me a fool. Not the first fool, of course, to love a promiscuous mistress. In any case, what I meant by falling in love with Léa would have to be reexamined, I told myself. Meanwhile I could only pray that I had confused a temporary infatuation with love. I decided I wouldn’t question Pierre about his “fling” with Léa. Instead, I let fall that after the interview she told me that she was a painter as well as a journalist. Did he know her work? Was it any good?
He told me he had seen her paintings; they were unusual in subject and the technique she used to achieve a smooth, almost glossy surface. Quite like the surfaces of Ingres. Yes, he thought they were good, which didn’t mean anyone bought them. He had told her he couldn’t help. He had never handled contemporary art; his one desire was to stay away from it.
Pierre had to leave to meet Marianne at a concert. We embraced, and I went back to my room. In the morning, Léa had told me that she would be at the hotel no later than nine-thirty. I had interpreted that to mean ten o’clock and ordered canapés from room service for that hour. I also ordered for ten-thirty a cold meal of roast chicken, Russian salad, cheese and fruit, and a bottle of red wine that was respectable and relatively inexpensive. I hoped she would find it sturdy enough. The cost of the celebratory long weekend was beginning to get on my nerves. Then I took a bath, shaved a second time, put on a pair of flannel trousers and a sweater, and, contrary to habit, since I seldom write in the evening, turned to my text. Once again I revised what I had written and composed an additional page. And once again I found myself bone tired. Only this time I did not get into bed or masturbate. I fell asleep head down over my manuscript.
The waiter bringing the hors d’oeuvres and a bottle of champagne on ice awakened me. It was five minutes after ten. In general, I really do not dislike waiting. But unless I have a good book to read—not one of my own!—it’s far better to wait in public places, where you can watch people coming and going, study their faces, and do a little eavesdropping. Unfortunately, when I am working on a novel, and particularly if my novel is not very far along, which was then the case, I have to avoid novels written by others. You don’t want some other writer’s voice in your ears, and there is a huge risk of that when you read good writers. Of course, instead of reading, you can let your mind wander. That is how I have gotten some of my best ideas. But it would have been useless to daydream just then. I was drained by the day’s work. Instead, I washed my face with cold water and, faute de mieux,took a Timefrom the coffee table. As you can imagine, I am not much of a magazine reader. At ten-thirty very precisely, the same waiter wheeled in the table with our refined collation. I asked him to open the wine
and pour me a glass. It was better than I had expected, another confirmation that buying costly wines is necessary only if one wants to give the sort of impression I never want to give, but it made me realize at once that what I really wanted was a big glass of potato vodka and that I was famished. The waiter set off in search of the vodka while I reviewed the situation. Clearly, I wasn’t irritated enough to tell the concierge that I was going to sleep and didn’t want to be disturbed by any visitor. In fact, the longer I waited the more I wanted Léa in my room and in my bed. I wouldn’t eat the cold chicken without her unless she was more than an hour late—that line would be crossed in twenty-five minutes. However, there was no reason that I shouldn’t eat the canapés—all of them if I liked. She had forfeited any right to champagne or to the hors d’oeuvres, the cost of which, as I calculated it rapidly, was more than half the price of the dinner. Knock, knock.It was not the young lady; it was my faithful waiter with the vodka, so cold the glass had thick frost on it, and a carafe with more in a little ice bucket. I blessed the man and gave him a large tip, every centime of which he had earned. Once I had finished the canapés and drunk all the vodka, my mood lightened. I didn’t even notice when the magic hour of eleven came and passed. Knock, knockagain. According to the clock on the mantelpiece it was eleven-fifteen. I opened the door. Ah, Mademoiselle Léa, in a white silk dress with black polka dots the size of grapefruits, cut wide so that I could think of nothing but the unobstructed access it offered to her person.
She had been obliged to go to the dinner that followed the opening, she explained, and she had sat through it without eating. Could we eat? Or should we make love first? Before I could get the words, Let’s make love, out of my mouth, she said no, she wasn’t sure that we were going to make love at all, so we had better eat. Very well, said I, let’s eat and let’s drink. I do believe she told the truth about not having touched the food at the restaurant because she demolished her half chicken in less time than it had taken me to eat the canapés, moved on to the cheese, and finished what was left of the wine. I rang for the waiter, who must have been standing behind the door, he arrived so fast, and I asked him to clear the table and open the champagne. Having the champagne opened was a preemptive strike worth making, although I certainly didn’t want any. The thought of all those bubbles made me sick. I feared that, given a chance, she would ask for more of the red wine, which was so evidently to her taste. But bringing another bottle would have taken some time—this not being a wine the hotel was pushing—and I wanted our midnight snack over and done with so that the party could move to the bedroom, the couch, or even the floor. The tempo of Léa’s ingestion, however, was slowing to an andante ma non troppo.She began to tell me about the sculpture show, how much I would like her friend’s constructions and the artist himself, how she had in fact arranged for us to get together at the gallery before lunch, so that I could see the work in his presence, and how we could perhaps take him to lunch with us afterward. The dinner had turned out to be fabulous too. I would have liked the restaurant and the decoration—coffeepots of every sort, paintings and drawings of coffeepots, and a very nice patron. Thereupon she made a moue, wrinkling her nose in a manner I found irresistible, and said she knew I wouldn’t like what she was going to tell me now: the real reason for her being so late was that Robineau insisted on sleeping with her—just one fuck, is what he said; he was not asking her to spend the night— so they had to go to his apartment, which is all the way on the other side of the Luxembourg, and then she had to find a taxi because she didn’t want to ask him to drive her to the place Vendôme as that would naturally have led to his asking all kinds of questions. That is, she concluded, why she wasn’t sure she was going to sleep with me.
You can wash first, I suggested. She turned red and I fully expected her to throw a plate at me or hit me with the wine bottle. Instead she said, You are a salaudtoo, just as bad as he, but I deserve what you said. I just don’t know that I can sleep with you tonight or—she brightened at the thought—I don’t know whether we can make love. We can sleep in the same bed, like brother and sister, because you are almost my great love. At that point, I was no longer certain of what I wanted more: to get her into bed and treat her like the little whore she was showing herself to be, or send her back to her studio with an envelope full of cash. Not for personal services but for the painting, since I was surely not going to renege on my purchase. She settled the issue for me, saying that I was right, she would take a hot bath. Perhaps I would take it with her in that enormous tub before we went to bed.
Time after time that night she protested that we should just make love very simply, like an old married couple, but I was as tough with her as I had intended to be at the height of my annoyance and demanded every accommodation she had offered during our first time and more, answering each Please not tonight, with Then get dressed and get out of here. She stayed and I suppose enjoyed herself because, before we finally stopped, and while I was somewhere between sleep and waking, she whispered in my ear that I had made her happy, and that she was wishing again I could be her great love. We slept late. One of the great advantages of being in Europe is that neither your family nor your agent wakes you unless you are still asleep at three o’clock in the afternoon. Some little alarm clock in Léa’s head must have gone off, reminding her of the appointment at the gallery, because she started nudging me to open my eyes and begin the day we were going to pass together, getting to the rue de Seine well before the sculptor had grounds to complain that we weren’t punctual. We had breakfast in bed. I asked her to take off the peignoir she had put on in preparation for the waiter’s arrival so I could look at and play with her breasts as she ate. I thought that my feelings for her, however I might characterize them, had not diminished. Most likely they were made up principally of an intense desire which, having been fulfilled, was turning into tenderness. Also, I thought she amused me; I found she was original. That view of her, as you will see, was destined to change. No doubt, what we had done during the night, and the promise I made to myself of what we might still do before going out or after lunch, had put me into a state of considerable exhilaration. I was returning to the thought that my time with Léa might be good for me and for my work, and that it need not harm anyone.
She had finished the contents of the basket of croissants and brioches and was working on the basket of fruit when I asked her why she had gone to bed with me the first time two nights before, why she continued to sleep with me, why she had gone off with Robineau on her way to me, what it was that drew her to so many men at more or less the same time—I said I could sense there were many—and what did it all have to do with monsieurthe physicist, her great love. That was quite a question, as she pointed out, but I managed to ask it well and very nicely. In any case, she did not get angry; she answered. She loved the physicist, she told me, because of his intelligence and what she could only call his nobility of soul. Besides, although he was old—fifteen years older than I, whom she thought in that regard just right since she liked men older than she—he was very sexy. And good at making love. As good as Robineau? No. Robineau fucks better than anybody, she said, before adding, out of politeness, except you when you don’t come too soon. That’s why I went with him last evening; he said if I didn’t he’d never sleep with me again. The others? She had not found anyone she wanted to marry who wanted to marry her, and she wanted to marry and have children. So she was still looking. How was she to find someone, unless she went to bed with the men who appealed to her? Besides, she added, you know that I like it and that I know what I’m doing in bed.
