L'Affaire

by Diane Johnson

  Géraldine stuck to Amy and presented her relentlessly to every guest, like a Victorian mother, or so it seemed to Amy, who longed to hide in a corner and talk to Kip. She disliked being the focus of the party. She was aware that the rich American girl was a stock character in the French imagination, or possibly in French experience, her boisterous vulgarity offset by her good nature and money, and Amy was vaguely afraid of fitting the bill. But each French person was more gracious than the last, and several proffered invitations to their châteaux, country houses, and favorite scenic expeditions. Amy, who had no wish to leave Paris, was obliged to accept several of these invitations, not that she didn’t want to, but a future of visits extended uneasily before her. All French people wanted to visit Las Vegas – what luck she didn’t live there! – but none expressed a wish to visit Palo Alto, though Stanford and Silicon Valley had for them a dim resonance.

  Amy noticed that Géraldine prefaced each introduction of an English person by referring to ‘nos amis les Anglais,’ our friends the English, in a tone that suggested that the English were even less beloved than Americans. But Géraldine seemed genuinely delighted to be able to present to each other such great literary figures as Estelle d’Argel and Robin Crumley, the latter of whose fame was known to her from her rententive memory of the names that appeared under small photos of guests at Paris parties, usually to do with fashion, in the front pages of Vogue or L’Officiel. Amy had found it strange that well-dressed French people seemed to attend a tireless circuit of commercial perfume parties to launch ‘Mystère, le nouveau parfum de…’ Or they flocked to buy diamonds! She had been to one such party at the Place Vendôme. Amy was amazed that Géraldine could think that she, Amy, would plan to buy a diamond, but the $250 donation went to preserving old windmills, a mildly good cause you could not regret.

  Estelle and Mr Crumley might easily have met in the great world of letters, but had not. Neither of these writers showed the least awareness of the other, though they smiled warmly. ‘Of course, I’ve never read a word of him,’ Estelle said later. ‘Un Anglais et un poet?’ Robin, though he said, ‘What an honor, madame,’ seemed irredeemably vague too. They were separated by the enormous gaps of nationality, of genre, and of sex, for male writers rarely read their female counterparts, poor creatures condemned to struggle in the wakes of the men racing to greatness like sailing yachts, and poets never read fiction, or vice versa. It went without saying that Estelle’s novels had never been translated into English, though an ardent disciple of Robin’s did produce translations of his poems into French and send them to French papers, which published them from time to time.

  Emile and Robin Crumley were delighted to see each other. They exchanged cheek kisses and pounded each other’s shoulders, which Amy thought very odd for men to do, and certainly un-English, whatever the French custom, or in Italian films where she had seen men kissing each other.

  ‘Emile, my dear! How nice to see you, all of us in our city clothes, alors, as you say, and Amy has metamorphosed from an Alpine sprite into this mondaine creature we see here! Hello – so wonderful to be en ville, frankly – remember our snowy calamity – I see now we could have been killed – people are in droves during winter, driving off roads, freezing, exposure – what a near thing!’

  ‘Crumley, you look very well. When did you get here?’

  ‘Yesterday. Yes, yes, I am very well indeed. The warmer climate of Paris suits me,’ Robin agreed. He seemed to radiate genial Francophilia and urbane goodwill. ‘Look at Amy, doesn’t she look citified?’

  Emile had noticed this. Haloed by the soft lamps of Géraldine’s salon, Amy did seem aglow, radiant in a way he had not noticed before, reflecting the attention, perhaps respect, implied by his mother-in-law’s interest, and the presence of her most important friends. Perhaps a ski station has a levelling effect that dissipates in the ruthless inegalitarian light of the City of Lights. Here she shone with beauty, even glamor. He wished she wouldn’t talk, but even there she seemed instinctively to know she was to say very little. She smiled, spoke a few shy words to each and every guest. It was not a bad performance. Really, Crumley – where was he? – was a clever creature, for an Englishman. How astute of him to recognize in the American a ton of money, with its peculiar reifying effect. Despite himself, he was a little dazzled too.

  Yet you heard that these heiresses were always restive, unhappy souls, not to be satisfied, so it was as well, for his own sake, that Crumley had not persevered. Looking at her, Emile didn’t detect restlessness, however. He shook himself out of his reverie, as he had other things to think about: the tiresome behavior of Victoire – which he assumed she’d get over – and the beginnings of an international incident that would have to be handled in the press. But there was a moment when politeness dictated he speak to the heiress herself.

  ‘Are you enjoying Paris? How are you spending your time?’

  She gave a demure smile. ‘Monday Wednesday Friday French lessons, Tuesday Thursday cooking, visite guidée each afternoon, musées – assorted musées each afternoon but Tuesday, exercise between five and six… I’m hoping to add piano,’ she said, only half facetiously.

  ‘Your life is like an opera, in the first act, when the jeune fille is coiffed, receives her music lesson, learns a few words of French – the young woman people are trying to marry off.’

  ‘Unlike me,’ Amy said.

  ‘What is the goal of all this effort?’

  Amy was startled. Wasn’t self-improvement an evident virtue? ‘Well – to be better. Every day in every way. It’s an American obsession.’ She deliberately threw in the dreaded A word, which she had observed before to have the effect on him of garlic on a vampire. But he didn’t flinch.

  ‘Isn’t your project of personal perfection rather self-indulgent? You don’t need to have perfect stomach muscles and a complete working knowledge of pâtisserie. Most people have to learn to live with their own imperfections, or just work on them at the weekend.’

  ‘Abs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stomach muscles are “abs” to us.’

  ‘Yes. It’s an American self-indulgence. And it misses the point somehow.’

  ‘Oh, well, we Americans always miss the point. I’ve come to understand that.’ Her tone, ironic, didn’t convince him she believed this. ‘I’m not doing it for myself, anyway,’ she added. Was she?

  ‘Oh, for whom, then?’

  ‘For others. It’s a gesture of cooperation to the world, to be as informed and as fit as you can.’

  ‘It is simple vanity disguised as Protestant virtue.’

  ‘Many religions incorporate physical feats – fasting, standing on your head, the plow,’ said Amy. ‘Crunches, in my religion.’

  ‘The religion of the self.’

  He was really unendurably sententious, but this time she felt, at least, that he was making an effort to be friendly, he just didn’t know how to be.

  Robin Crumley was presented to Pamela Venn. The woman was in truth closer to his age than her daughter was, though he didn’t dwell on that. A good-looking woman, a prediction of what Posy would look like. ‘Of course I had the pleasure of meeting Posy and Rupert in Valméri,’ he said. ‘She’s a clever girl, most impressive.’

  ‘It was a hard thing for them. I am very proud of them both,’ said Pamela. Robin had an instant of blankness before remembering what she could mean – the long coma of the father, the swine who had treated Posy so badly. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ Pamela went on. ‘I think we have a friend in common, Drusilla Able, the head of the North West London Reader’s Society – I know you gave a wonderful reading at the Regents Park Mechanics Hall recently…’

  ‘Mmm, oh yes indeed,’ Rupert agreed, though he had no specific memory of that occasion and hadn’t a clue about Drusilla Able.

  *

  Kip was going on to Emile about his school at more length than Emile actually wanted to hear. ‘It’s not so bad here, though. There are a lot of Ameri
cans. I’d like to go back to Oregon next year, though. I’m on the ski team. If I went back now, there’s only another month of the season, and I think I should stay here with Kerry. She’s getting better, but not that fast…’ and many more details of Kerry’s recovery and even of her mental state, described as very preoccupied with her supernatural vision.

  Emile was puzzled to hear from Kip that the clinic found for Kerry was the well-known Clinique Marianne, an alcohol rehab and psychiatric facility made famous in the days of Cocteau. Was there more to her malady than had been acknowledged? Or was it simply that there was comfort (even luxury for rich clients), and space for baby Harry and his nurse? Emile could easily picture the private quarters and expensively cheerful staff of this legendary clinic, and it occurred to him to wonder if the American was paying for this, too, or whether it was coming out of the estate. He didn’t care enough to raise this issue himself, but someone would, probably the English family, soon enough. Kip went on speaking to Emile, but seemed to be avoiding Amy Hawkins, his supposed benefactress. Emile noticed that when Amy would glance around for Kip, the boy would look down or away. Amy noticed this too.

  Emile thought it was rather hard on Kip to be stashed in some school in Versailles – he was clearly happy to be here among familiar faces like Rupert and Crumley, and Amy Hawkins. Emile had known about her unfortunate interference in the matter of transporting Victoire’s father, but hadn’t known until Kip told him that it was she who had organized the school and offered to pay his way back to America if he wanted to go back to his former one.

  All, but especially Amy, were surprised to hear of the continuing interest of Parisians in Jeanne d’Arc, whose apparition was being talked of either as a ‘psychic aberration,’ a true ‘visitation,’ or an ‘American incursion,’ though always entre guillemets, as if each speaker feared making the wrong choice among these possibilities, given the impossibility of such an apparition at all. In the American newspapers, Amy had been following a growing protest in America, localized for now in Washington, but with voices newly raised in California, over the government’s lack of transparency when it came to military activities, now jeopardizing even Europe, which it had taken an Alpine tragedy to expose. In the teeth of a number of these small demonstrations, the President’s press secretary had issued a flat denial that any American planes had been anywhere near the Alps, let alone flying low enough to start an avalanche. Activists had countered with statements of disbelief, and hypotheses about planned escalations of war in the Mideast or the Balkans.

  The serious French press was also hammering this view, predicting random invasions, perhaps even of Europe, so extreme was their apprehensiveness. The very most left-wing papers predicted illegal cooperation by the French government with the nefarious American plans. The popular French press was more drawn to stories of the apparition of Jeanne d’Arc herself than to discussions of her political significance. It was the occasion for many essays on the ‘mystery of the Alps,’ and the manner in which it represented lingering superstition and symbolized national aspirations. ‘An apparition in the mind of an appointed one, the witness, is no less meant for the rest of us,’ opined Father Ruiz, the revered priest, in Lyon. Géraldine had passed on some clippings, which Amy, dictionary in hand, had laboriously translated.

  ‘The sainted Jeanne, whatever one may believe about her material presence, retains her inspirational power – her courage and candor, her belief in herself,’ Emile was saying to several admirers.

  Apropos of Joan of Arc, Mr Osworthy had good news for Amy, gleaned from reading Le Monde on the train. ‘There was nobody there, under the snow, at least that they can find. They don’t rule out a grisly suprise in the spring.’

  ‘Good news,’ said Amy, wondering if he meant, as a subtext, You in particular will be relieved to hear there’s no one else dead up there. ‘How do they know?’

  ‘I believe they do probes, or radio waves. But there is some bad news, too, or at least cause for uneasiness. But I will ring you tomorrow. Something rather appalling has happened, concerning Kerry and Kip. I’ll ring you first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Well, what? You can tell me now.’

  ‘Kerry is acting strangely, combative, unhappy with the death of her husband.’

  ‘Seems natural.’

  ‘We’ll speak in the morning.’

  Amy drifted off to look for Kip. ‘American culture, an oxymoron,’ Emile was saying in English to someone. ‘However much they may want it, however flat their lives must be without it – hence the obsession with money – they mistrust culture in the European sense. Think of their inhuman treatment of their most brilliant writer, the neglected genius Poe.’

  This was the first time Amy had heard the notion that Poe was the most brilliant American writer. The same Poe that had written ‘The Telltale Heart’? It was true that she could still remember her elementary school reading of that tale, more than one could say for most stories. She resolved to ask Sigrid to find a biography of Poe and FedEx it over.

  At nine, people began to drift off to their dinners. Amy waited till all had gone to thank Géraldine profusely and say a special good night to Victoire, for whom she had had a sympathetic feeling since the moment of Victoire’s incipient tears in the hotel ladies’ room. Tonight, as then, Victoire was a miracle of poise and soignée (‘well-tended, well-groomed’) prettiness, but, as then, was distracted though playing to perfection the role of daughter of the house (jeune fille de la maison), leaving to her husband the task of talking to the serious politicians and businessmen.

  Victoire’s children, so unlike children at home, were models of some French concept of childhood, putting their little faces up to be kissed by the adults and saying, ‘Bonsoir, madame,’ like fully functioning citizens of this party. Amy admired the way they weren’t shuffled off with a baby-sitter and that they repaid the trust placed in them by behaving well. Though because of Harry, Amy was more aware of children than before, she was not sure how she felt about them generically, and was pleased to feel an actual affectionate impulse toward these pretty, dark little girls. The Abboud family seemed to embody some ideal not quite American but more in the Platonic sense of the way families were meant to be – sons-in-law cooperated in the family project, even when it was for some friend of the mother-in-law. On Sunday afternoons in Palo Alto, the guys would be watching football.

  ‘It was a joy, bien sûr, and thank you for the lovely tulips. But did you think we didn’t have enough flowers?’ Géraldine said.

  Kip had continued to avoid Amy, so that finally she accosted him. ‘Why are you hiding from me?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said.

  ‘Is it something about Kerry?’ Amy asked, remembering what Osworthy had just told her.

  ‘I can’t help it if she’s weird’ he said evasively, and she let it drop. Mr Osworthy would tell her soon enough. She insisted on inviting Kip to dinner after the party, partly because she guessed that he would like to stay away from his boarding school as late as allowed, and she wanted to cheer him up a little, and partly because she feared Otto’s offer of seeing her home. Sure enough, Otto was waiting for her outside, and if he was chagrined to find Kip, he didn’t show it, but took her arm and chatted to them both. They dined in a brasserie on the Ile Saint-Louis. Kip seemed uncomfortable – perhaps it was the presence of the baron – and hurried through his dinner. Amy knew he must be lonesome at his school without even Harry to talk to, which could explain his taciturn manner, as he talked about his French class and the problems posed by the fact that kids his age in France were farther along in math – though far behind in computers. He finally confided some of his worries about Kerry.

  ‘They won’t let her go home,’ Kip said. ‘Her château, where she lives – they say no one can go inside now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it won’t be hers. Posy and the others get it. Maybe they’ll let her stay in it, but it depends on what Adrian signed or something.’
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br />   ‘Doesn’t Harry get a share? They can’t just put Harry out in the street. Anyhow, they seem nice, it’s hard to believe…’ Amy said, very shocked. ‘Let me find out.’ She was thinking that perhaps Posy and Rupert didn’t realize that Kerry had no place to go. ‘I can call Mr Osworthy. He probably just hasn’t thought.’

  They put Kip on the metro at eleven, and Otto walked Amy home through the courtyard of the Louvre and over the Pont Royal. Lights on the other bridges were reflected in the black water of the river. A bateau-mouche washed them with its powerful lights. He came upstairs with her, not to her surprise and, in a funny way, in accordance with her hope; though she didn’t plan to sleep with him, his familiar face at Géraldine’s in the sea of thin, well-made-up, and crisply barbered unfamiliar French faces had somehow warmed her. She was lonesome herself. He admired her new apartment in effusive, slightly professional terms – ‘Hmmm, north facing but you will have sun from the south in the kitchen and bedroom, and it is well that the bedroom is not on the quay. Quite a pretty color – what do you call it?’

  ‘Robin’s-egg blue,’ Amy said. ‘Something else in French; it’s copied from the Grand Trianon.’

  ‘We must talk,’ he said, as they gazed reverently at this so meditated and authentic color.

  ‘Drink?’ Amy proposed. ‘Sit down, please…’

  ‘It’s Fennie,’ he began when they had sat down. ‘My wife. As you know, she is very difficult. I do not see how we can go on, you and I. She is going to come to Paris with me in future… In fact, she is here now, at the Hôtel du Louvre. I told her I had a business engagement… I felt I must see you before – before our hearts become too entangled. More entangled.’