Peter Taylor

by Peter Taylor

  Je Suis Perdu

  L’ALLEGRO

  THE SOUND of their laughter came to him along the narrow passage that split the apartment in two. It was the laughter of his wife and his little daughter, and he could tell they were laughing at something the baby had done or had tried to say. Shutting off the water in the washbasin, he cracked the door and listened. There was simply no mistaking a certain note in the little girl’s giggles. Her naturally deep little voice could never be brought to such a high pitch except by her baby brother’s “being funny.” And on such a day as this, the day for packing the last suitcases and for setting the furnished apartment in order, the day before the day when they would really pull up stakes in Paris and take the boat train for Cherbourg—on such a day, only the baby could evoke from its mother that resonant, relaxed, almost abandoned kind of laughter . . . They were in the dining room just sitting down to breakfast. He had eaten when he got up with the baby an hour before, and was now in the salle de bain preparing to shave.

  The salle de bain, which was at one end of the long central passage, was the only room in the apartment that always went by its French name. For good reason, too: it lacked the one all-important convenience that an American expects of what he will willingly call a bathroom. It possessed a bathtub and a washbasin, and it had a bidet, which was wonderful for washing the baby in. But the missing convenience was in a closet close by the entrance to the apartment, at the very opposite end of the passage from the salle de bain. Altogether it was a devilish arrangement. But the separation of conveniences was not itself so devilish as the particular location of each. For instance just now, with only a towel wrapped around his middle and with his face already lathered, he hesitated to throw open the door and take part in a long-distance conversation with the rest of the family, because at any moment he expected to hear the maid’s key rattling in the old-fashioned lock of the entry door down the passage. Instead, he had to remain inside the salle de bain with his hand on the doorknob and his gaze on the blank washbasin mirror (still misted over from the hot bath he had just got out of); had to stand there and be content merely with hearing the sound of merriment in yonder, not able—no matter how hard he strained—to determine the precise cause of it.

  At last, he could resist no longer. He pushed the door half open and called out to them, “What is it? What’s the baby up to?”

  His daughter’s voice piped from the dining room, “Come see, Daddy! Come see him!” And in the next instant she had bounced out of the dining room into the passage, and she continued bouncing up and down there as if she were on a pogo stick. She was a tall little girl for her seven years, and she looked positively lanky in her straight white nightgown and with her yellow hair not yet combed this morning but drawn roughly into a ponytail high on the back of her head.

  And then his wife’s voice: “It’s incredible, honey! You really must come! And quick, before he stops! He’s a perfect little monkey!”

  But already it was too late. The maid’s key rattled noisily in the lock. As he quickly stepped backward into the salle de bain and pulled the door to, he called to them in a stage whisper, “Bring me my bathrobe.”

  Through the door he heard his wife’s answer: “You know your bathrobe’s packed. You said you wouldn’t need it again. Put on your clothes.”

  His trousers and his shirt and underwear hung on one door hook, beside his pajamas on another. His first impulse was to slip into his clothes and go and see what it was the baby was doing. But on second thought there seemed too many arguments against this. His face was already lathered. He much, much preferred shaving as he now was, wearing only his towel. But still more compelling was the argument that it was to be a very special shave this morning. This morning the mustache was going to go!

  Months back he had made a secret pact with himself to the effect that if the work he came over here to do was really finished when the year was up, then the mustache he had begun growing the day he arrived would go the day he left. From the beginning his wife had pretended to loathe it, though he knew she rather favored the idea as long as they were here, and only dreaded, as he did, the prospect of his going home with that brush on his upper lip. But he had not even mentioned the possibility of shaving the mustache. And as he wiped the mist from the mirror and then slipped a fresh blade into his razor, he smiled in anticipation of the carrying on there would be over its removal.

  In the passage now there was the clacking sound of the maid’s footsteps. He could hear her taking all her usual steps—putting away the milk and bread that she had picked up on her way to work, crossing to the cloak closet, and placing her worn suede jacket and her silk scarf on a hanger—just as though this were not her last day on the job; or rather, last day with them in the apartment, because she was coming the following day, faithful and obliging soul, to wax the floors and hang the clean curtains she herself had washed. Their blessed, hardworking Marie. According to his wife, their having had Marie constituted their greatest luck and their greatest luxury this year. He scarcely ever saw her himself, and sometimes he had passed her down on the boulevard without recognizing her until, belatedly, he realized that it had been her scarf and her jacket, and his baby in the carriage she pushed. But he had gradually assumed his wife’s view that their getting hold of Marie had been the real pinnacle of all their good luck about living arrangements. Their apartment was a fourth-floor walkup, overlooking the Boulevard Saint-Michel and just two doors from the rue des Écoles; with its genuine chauffage central and its Swedish kitchen, and even a study for him. It was everything they could have wished for. At first they had thought they ought not to afford such an apartment as this one, but because of the children they decided it was worth the price to them. And after his work on the book got off to a good start and he saw that the first draft would almost certainly get finished this year, they decided that it would be a shame not to make the most of the year; that is, not to have some degree of freedom from housekeeping and looking after the children. And so they spoke to the concierge, who recommended Marie to them, saying that she was a mature woman who knew what it was to work but who might have to be forgiven a good deal of ignorance since she had not lived always in Paris. They had found nothing to forgive in Marie. Even her haggard appearance his wife had come to speak of as her “ascetic look.” Even her reluctance to try to understand a single word of English represented, as did the noisy rattling of the door key, her extreme consideration for their privacy. Every morning at half-past eight, her key rattled in the lock to their door. She was with them all day, sometimes taking the children to the park, always going out to do more marketing, never off her feet, never idle a moment until she had prepared their evening meal and left them, to ride the Métro across Paris again—almost to Saint-Denis—and prepare another evening meal for her own husband and son.

  Yet this maid of theirs was, in his mind, only a symbol of how they had been served this year. It was hard to think of anything that had not worked out in their favor. They had ended by even liking their landlady, who, although she lived but a block away up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, had been no bother to them whatever, and had just yesterday actually returned the full amount of their deposit on the furniture. Their luck had, of course, been phenomenal. After one week in the Hôtel des Saints-Pères, someone there had told them about M. Pavlushkoff, “the honest real-estate agent.” They had put their problem in the hands of this splendid White Russian—this amiable, honest, intelligent, efficient man, with his office (to signalize his greatest virtue, his sensibility) in the beautiful Place des Vosges. Once M. Pavlushkoff had found them their apartment they never saw him again, but periodically he would telephone them to inquire if all went well and if he could assist them in any way. And once in a desperate hour—near midnight—they telephoned him, to ask for the name of a doctor. In less than half an hour M. Pavlushkoff had sent dear old Dr. Marceau to them.

  And Dr. Marceau himself had been another of their angels. The concierge had fetched round
another doctor for them the previous afternoon, and he had made the little girl’s ailment out to be something very grave and mysterious. He had prescribed some kind of febrifuge and the burning of eucalyptus leaves in her room. But Dr. Marceau immediately diagnosed measles (which they had believed it to be all along, with half her class at L’École Père Castor already out of school with it). Next day, Dr. Marceau had returned to give the baby an injection that made the little fellow’s case a light one; and later on he saw them through the children’s siege of chicken pox. Both the children were completely charmed by the old doctor. Even on that first visit, when the little girl had not yet taken possession of the French language, she found the doctor irresistible. He had bent over her and listened to her heart not through a stethoscope but with only a piece of Kleenex spread out between her bare chest and his big pink ear. As he listened, sticking the top of his bald head directly in her face, he quite unintentionally tickled her nose with the pretty ruffle of white hair that ringed his pate. Instantly the little girl’s eyes met her mother’s. From her sickbed she burst into giggles and came near to causing her mother to do the same. After that, whenever the doctor came to see her, or to see her little brother, she would insist upon his listening to her heart. It would be hard to say whether Dr. Marceau was ever aware of why the little girl giggled, but he always said in French that she had the heart of a lioness, and he always stopped and kissed her on the forehead when he was leaving.

  That’s what the whole year had been like. There was that, and there had been the project—the work on his book, which was about certain Confederate statesmen and agents who, with their families, were in Paris at the end of the Civil War, and who had to decide whether to go home and live under the new regime or remain permanently in Europe.

  As far as his research was concerned, he had soon found that there was nothing to be got hold of at the Bibliothèque Nationale or anywhere else in Paris that was not available at home. And yet how stimulating to his imagination it was just to walk along the rue de l’Université in the late afternoon, or along the rue de Varenne, or over on the other side of the Seine along the rue de Rivoli and the rue Saint-Antoine, hunting out the old addresses of the people he was writing about. And of course how stimulating to his work it was just being in Paris, no matter what his subject. Certain of his cronies back home at the university had accused him of selecting his subject merely as an excuse to come to Paris . . . He couldn’t be sure himself what part that had played in it. But it didn’t matter. He had had the idea, and he had done the work.

  With his face smoothly shaven, and dressed in his clean clothes, he was in such gay spirits that he was tempted to go into the dining room and announce that he was dedicating this book to M. Pavlushkoff, to Dr. Marceau, to Marie, to all his French collaborators.

  He found the family in the dining room, still lingering over breakfast, the little girl still in her nightgown, his wife in her nylon housecoat. At sight of his naked upper lip his wife’s face lit up. Without rising from her chair, she threw out her arms, saying, “I must have the first kiss! How beautiful you are!”

  The little girl burst into laughter again. “Mama!” she exclaimed. “Don’t say that! Men aren’t beautiful, are they, Daddy?” She still had not noticed that the mustache was gone.

  It was only a token kiss he got from his wife. She was afraid that Marie might come in at any moment to take their breakfast dishes. Keeping her eyes on the door to the passage, she began pushing him away almost before their lips met. And so he turned to his daughter, trying to give her a kiss. Still she hadn’t grasped what had brought on her parents’ foolishness, and she wriggled away from him and out of her chair, laughing and fairly shrieking out, “What’s the matter with him, Mama?”

  “Just look!” whispered his wife; and at first he thought of course she meant look at him. “Look at the baby, for heaven’s sake,” she said.

  The baby was in his playpen in the corner of the dining room. With his hands clasped on the top of his head and his fat little legs stuck out before him, he was using his heels to turn himself round and round, pivoting on his bottom.

  “How remarkable!” the baby’s daddy now heard himself saying.

  “Watch his eyes,” said the mother. “Watch how he rolls them.”

  “Why, he is rolling them! How really remarkable!” He glanced joyfully at his wife.

  “That’s only the half of it,” she said. “In a minute he’ll begin going around the other way and rolling his eyes in the other direction.”

  “It’s amazing,” he said, speaking very earnestly and staring at the baby. “He already has better coordination than I’ve ever had or ever hope to have. I’ve noticed it in other things he’s done recently. What a lucky break!”

  And presently the baby, having made three complete turns to the right, did begin revolving the other way round and rolling his eyes in the other direction. The two parents and the little girl were laughing together now and exchanging intermittent glances in order to share the moment fully. The most comical aspect of it was the serious expression on the baby’s face, particularly at the moment when, facing them and stopping quite still, he shifted the direction of his eye rolling. At this moment the little girl’s voice moved up at least one octave. She never showed any natural jealousy of her baby brother, but at such times as this she often seemed to be determined to outdo her parents in their amusement and in their admiration of the baby. Just now she was so convulsed with laughter that she staggered back to her chair and threw herself into it and leaned against the table. As she did so, one of her flailing hands struck her milk glass, which was still half full. The milk poured out over the placemat and then traced little white rivulets over the dark surface of the table.

  Both parents pounced upon the child at once: “Honey! Honey! Watch out! Watch what you’re doing!”

  The little girl crimsoned. Her lips trembled as she said under her breath, “Je regrette.”

  “If you had drunk your milk this wouldn’t have happened,” said the mother, dabbing at the milk with a paper napkin.

  “Regardless of that,” said the father with unusual severity in his voice, “she has no business throwing herself about so and going into such paroxysms over nothing.” But he knew, really, that it was not the threshing about that irritated him so much as it was the lapse into French. And it was almost as though his wife understood this and wished to point it out. For, discovering that a few drops of milk had trickled down one table leg and onto the carpet, she turned and herself called out in French to the maid to come and bring a cloth. His own mastery of French speech, he reflected, was the thing that hadn’t gone well this year. After all, as he was in the habit of telling himself, he hadn’t had the opportunity to converse with Marie a large part of each day, or to attend a primary school where the teacher and the other pupils spoke no English, and he hadn’t—with his responsibilities to his work and his family—been able to hang about the cafés like some student. It was a consoling thought. Righteously, he put aside his irritation.

  But now his little daughter, sitting erect in her chair, repeated aloud: “Je regrette. Je regrette.” This time it affected him differently. It was impossible to tell whether she was using the French phrase deliberately or whether she wasn’t even aware of doing so. But whether deliberate or not, it had its effect on her father. For a time it caused him to stare at his daughter with the same kind of interest that he had watched his son with a few moments before. And all the while his mind was busily tying the present incident to one that had occurred several weeks before. He had taken the little girl to see an old Charlie Chaplin film one afternoon at a little movie theater around the corner from them on the rue des Écoles. They had stayed on after the feature to see the newsreel, and then after the newsreel, along with a fairly large proportion of the audience, they had risen in the dark to make their way out. The ushers at the rear of the theater were not able to restrain the crowd that was waiting for seats; and so there was the inevitab
le melee in the aisles. When finally he came out into the lighted lobby he assumed that his little girl was still sticking close behind him, and he began getting into his mackinaw without even looking back to see that she was there. Yes, it was thoughtless of him, all right; but it was what he had done. As he tugged at the belt of the bulky mackinaw, he became aware of a small voice crying out above the noise of the canned music back in the theater. What interested him first was merely the fact that he did understand the cry: “Je suis perdue! Je suis perdue!” Actually he didn’t recognize it as his daughter’s voice until rather casually and quite by chance he glanced behind him and saw that she was not there. He threw himself against the crowd that was still emerging from the exit, all the while mumbling apologies to them in his Tennessee French which he was sure they would not understand (though himself understanding perfectly their oaths and expletives) and still hearing from the darkness ahead her repeated cry: “Je suis perdue!” When he found her she was standing against the side wall of the theater, perfectly rigid. Reaching down in the darkness to take her hand he found her hand made into a tight little fist. By the time he got her out into the light of the lobby her hand in his felt quite relaxed. Along the way she had begun to cry a little, but already she was smiling at him through her tears. “I thought I was lost, Daddy,” she said to him. He had been so relieved at finding her and at seeing her smiling so soon that he had not even tried to explain how it had happened, much less describe the chilling sensations that had been his at that moment when he realized it was the voice of his own child calling out to him, in French, that she was lost.