Apples and Pears

by Guy Davenport

  I remembered and told Sander Julio Cortázar’s story about the photograph taken on a Parisian street, of a boy ostensibly approaching a poule, a study in the manner of Cartier-Bresson that turned out on being developed to have inexplicable elements in it, or rather elements that could be explained in several ways, such as a man in a car looking over the top of a newspaper, whose attention admits of all sorts of readings.

  Les Invalides and round about. Vincennes. The bois there, the chateau, streets, markets. We strode through the rain, intrepid explorers. Sander liked everything, asked a million questions, missed nothing. I enjoyed being the cicerone. Here Proust wrote the novel, Colette lived up there. We went into the Gare St.-Lazare, because of Monet. Where he took the train for Giverny. And down nearby, the Lycée Condorcet, where Mallarme taught English, perhaps taught Proust. On its wall, a terse graffito: Vivisection crime. Probably translating, I hate my biology class.

  To leave the forest just when it is white with mist half the morning and its gold begins to fall, to leave Valvins, these rocks, these trees, these roads, and to take up the school year in Paris in an odor of oilcloth, chalk, and urine, this was the sentence of drudgery year after year, teaching English to rats in stockings and smocks, to giggling bored depraved Walloon geese, to boys. Aubain, Beauchamps, Bloch. The devil will not come into Cornwall for fear of being put into a pie. Charron, Delavigne, Drouet. It would wex a dog to see a pudding creep. Frontenac, Guérard, Houssaye, Marronier, Proust, Roquetin, Saussure, Weil. Brag est un bon chien mais Holdfast un meilleur. Rats’ eyes, spit-balls, whispers, palmed photographs, erections in their smocks caressed with rolling hands, even when standing to recite. Parce qu’il est hanté par l’azur! And from lycee to lycee, Besançon to Paris, by some network, cousin to cousin, the epithet père, not quite out of his hearing, always deniable, filthy little beasts. The Isle of Wight has no lawyers or foxes. The leaves at Valvins go brown, go gold, the boat is hooded in its tarpaulin for the winter, and wasps worry the windowpanes by day, moths by night, and through the poplars from the walk around the lily pond you can see the hay harvest pitched into ricks by farmers gaitered and hatted like figures in Hokusai. Arrive the rats, by din, by caw, by whoop. One has cracked another with an algebra on the head. An accusation of lice vies with one of sodomy. Grandpa in his plaid shawl is now going to drill us in aspirating the aitch of the English. Breg is a gid dug bet Oldfest is ze bettair. Le meilleur ou un meilleur? Delavigne jiggles his foot, holds his crotch like a miser his purse, eyes vapid and fixed, mouth open like a sailor swarming the rigging in a gale. Delavigne! Translate, if you please, the higher the ape goes, the more he shows his tail. What page? What line? Never mind what page or line. Were my hand the lilac and yellow at Giverny, April on the Japanese bridge, sheets of light and hollows of shadow, a garden on a river, flowers on a mirror, red and violet burning in the dark of every green. Plus il montre sa queue. Bloch’s blue discs of eyes tick from Delavigne to Proust, the face of a Poussin shepherd blasted by idiocy. Rat smirks, goose eyes, ferret muzzles. Climb? Grimper, grimper! What page, what line? A fart, a red face. The monkey’s tail is stiff and feels so good. Silence! We are studying the language of a disciplined and well-behaved people, and we should emulate their manners whilst we learn their tongue. Words said by no one, a witching ventriloquy, the Prince of Wales, Jack the Ripper. Delavigne! Quit shaking the whole room with your jouncing foot and put both hands on your desk. And translate. O, but he can still come, by thinking about it, that one! Bloch! Book, essence, faun. The Book. Wittgenstein with his grammar-school children at Puchberg around 1923. Barthes with his spoiled young esthetes, Sartre teaching history in Rochelle.

  28 MESSIDOR

  Gymnasium. Sweet to get back into old ways, alone. The trees along the canals bushy silver and gold against a bitter blue autumnal sky. Infernal traffic. Gerrit with his verouderd Ionisch body, Brabantine blond thatch sheepdog thick and sheepdoggishly blinkering, so that his most characteristic gesture is arching his tall throat to toss it out of his eyes, greeted me. Good workout, swim.

  Talking Coxeter and Fuller with Bruno, Saartje and Hans getting in from time to time, to butt and squeal, with Kaatje plucking them off against our protests that they were welcome. Max and Margareta over for coffee. He approves of my draft of Sander’s catalogue copy, urging me to incite him to even greater boldness. They called, travel weary, around ten, Sander throwing in French and Danish phrases.

  29 MESSIDOR

  How distinguish between the lurch of the mind into a gritty unevenness that sees everything as uncooperative and this morning’s smooth balance, a harvest of Erewhonian luck? After the congenial monotony of coffee and journal, a swim. Refreshed, feeling victorious over traffic, time, and the whole dundering insane botch of the century, rolled up at Sander’s, as asked, to find Grietje just back from the baker in sweater, scarf, jeans, and sandals, laying out café au lait in the studio, some abominably raucous American record on the gramophone. To shake Sander loose, she explained. Go pull him out of the bed, I’ve tried twice, and the second time he made a convincing effort to get me back into it, the seksmaniak. His head was indeed burrowed under the bolster, the eiderdown was wadded in a crump around his back, with a bare butt and wide divarication of brown legs sprawled therefrom. I tickled the sole of a foot, causing a galvanic contraction and mumped complaint. Grietje kittled his balsak, achieving a thrashing spin of Sander entire, bellowing, gruntling, and mussed. A kiss from Grietje on his rigid peester and one from me on the nape, corrected by him to one on the corner of the mouth, and he was up and doing. Ach, Adriaan, and aha, he said over coffee, you have no notion what you’re in for. I had already seen the big long canvas with a lovely donkey in charcoal, a donkey with a head two sizes too large, jackrabbit ears, and a boy astride. The boy was a frail sketch, quickly superimposed. That’s one of the donkeys in the park, Sander explained, the ones kids ride. That’s going to be Hans on him. Behind them will be a quagga with Saartje on it. A generous space, and over here on the left I want a Vigeland kind of group, a philosopher with spadgers and chits and striplings. And up here one of my moths.

  Warm and dry over an able red wine and Gruyère at the Balzac the summer Joop won the Tour, we hypothesized the furtive spectacle we’d seen the day before, which I saw as Balthusian, with a touch of Cocteau, and which stirred Sander’s imagination and emulation back in our room. Hypothesis: A (lying down) was a stranger to B (jacking off). This makes A singularly tolerant, accommodating, and, by having shed his shirt and opened his fly, encouraging. Not to be a stranger for long. Sander’s hypothesis: A hankers for B, his friend, who will not cooperate further than allowing himself to be adored. The broad daylight scenario is to prevent B from advances. My next hypothesis: A and B are the closest of friends who do everything together that can be done, including seducing each other in public, the danger of which they find spicy. Too novelistic, Sander criticizes, too psychiatric, and counters with: A was taking a sunbath alone with his shirt off. B, passing by, was taken with his body and proceeded to enjoy himself while gazing, a practical sensualist. A notices, is pleased, and at the moment we passed had got as far as undressing little by little. Had we gone back, his jeans might have been shoved down his thighs, the tourists would be bumping into each other, and the curly-haired boy would have his fist in his pocket, planning great things for when he got home. In which case B’s hand in his pants was foreplay. Hypothesis: all of this was spinning a web for the curly-haired boy. More sinister interpretations (we’d come up with several) would not fit the amused smile of A or the intent gaze of B.

  Meanwhile, Sander sighed, my sister and darling is with Cucumber. Asked why he had not brought her to Paris. And both of us freeload off you? Besides, she wanted me to see you. She thinks we do things we don’t, though I’ve told her how I offered you my body the summer of my civilizing and how you eased me down so kindly and expertly that I didn’t realize until months afterwards that you didn’t actually take it. You’re a good man, you kn
ow? I said smugly that I knew a thing or two about yeasty boys. For which I got a tongue stuck out at me and a handsome grin. I came to see you, he said, to see Paris, it’s wonderful with you, and have you get me, I suppose, out of bed with Zuster Grietje. I said: how can I, possibly? All problems solve themselves. You’re happy with her and she seems happy with you. Your account of it all is thoroughly depraving, I assure you. Look. What you’re doing is sharing living quarters with a sister. She needs you. She won’t always. Nor you her. Time has things to say about these matters. That is, neither you nor she knows what you’re really doing. Holding together two parts of a disastrously exploded family? God forbid, he said. The romping in bed is all symbol, I think. Sex is itself a sublimation, not things a sublimation of sex. Warm hearts, a secret understanding, hot pants, and the sweet revenge of breaking a taboo. Not quit? he asked. Do you want to? Good Lord, no! Does she? Not her.

  30 MESSIDOR

  Sander had called his sister and seemed grandly pleased. We planned to return to Amsterdam as soon as the Tour was over. I felt certain that Max would take Sander on as a pupil when he saw the drawings. We were giddy with the high spirits of making a painter of him, as if by a capricious snap of the fingers. To be an artist! You think so, Adriaan? This is crazy! And Grietje. That’s crazy. He took his drawing books and pencils along on our walk, a long one around the Marais where we watched a mime, fascinating Sander. We went along the boulevard St.-Denis, and over to the river. The sun broke out in a fine blue sky. Then to the quai down by the Pont Alexandre IIIe, without admitting to each other that we were going there. A clochard sunning himself and nipping from a bottle of wine. A housewifely woman in a monokini, breasts rolling away from each other as in Athenian drawings of heterai. Francis Bacon, said Sander. Some almost naked youngsters further along. More like it, said Sander. Sunbathers on barges, the gentry of this part of the river, and making Amsterdammers feel at home. Some wearing cache-sexes, so that face down they’re stark naked except for a Y of string. Sander, choosing a place, took off his clothes right down to his new slip si serre et collant, what there is of it, like pretty much everybody else up and down the quai for a hundred meters, presentable, trim, and brown to the Parisian eye, several of which cast approving and appreciative glances and grins. I hope, he said, your French can get us out of whatever I’m liable to get us into. These Sander pants please me wonderfully. I look good in them, don’t I? Let us see that flat hairy tummy you’re so vain of. I comply as far as taking off my shirt, the sun feels so good, acting in his fantasy. We sit with our backs against the warm, ancient wall. The Seine glitters, the moored barges rise and rock at the passing of industrial barges midriver. The Left Bank as far as we can see each way is ineffably beautiful. I feel like a straying lover being unfaithful to Amsterdam, or to my island, whose empty loneliness I imagine, afternoon sunlight in white squares on the cabin floor, my books (if things are in any way sentient and Time their god) missing my care of them, my attention. Look, says Sander, scratching the hair the pouch of his slip doesn’t cover, our friends. The hypotheticals. So they know each other! Now they do, says Sander. I get out my pipe and as I punch in the tobacco I realize that the boy with his hand in his pants of earlier is, I’ll swear, one of the mimes outside the Pompidou. Indeed, yes. The other too? No, I don’t think. Sander mischievously taps his pouch with two fingers. As if to oblige us, they take station nearby. What luck, says Sander. We must live right. He opens his drawing book. A is wearing a striped soccer jersey and jeans, and confirms my opinion that he and his companion are upper middle class. B wears the same dark blue corduroy trousers and a grey pullover. Their accent is Parisian, the words unintelligible, the conversational tones of old friends. Sander draws. Outline of face, hair. Off come A’s sneakers, he’s wearing no socks, and his jeans, no underwear, as when he was miming, but with wholly different movements. Well hung, I remark. Sort of, says Sander. A folds his jeans and sits on them, against the wall like us, cupping his hands over his genitals. A passing couple from Idaho, at a guess, stumble in looking back. B takes off his pull, shoes, and socks. Sander draws, filling the page with quick, clear annotations of parts of bodies and clothing. B sits beside A, an arm over his shoulder. Gekakel gekakel, says Sander. What are they saying? Hei! there’s the splinter-new nipper with the puky curls and Mongolian boots. Is this a plaats van samenkomst? He has on a sailor’s middy, French jetting on the tallywhacker, the neckerchief royal blue. He stands with the plummet-line, pert-butted aplomb of a figure by Seurat. He scans the river, the wall, punches his hands into his pockets, and brings his kitten’s gaze to rest on our neighbors the two youngsters one of whom is sitting on all his clothes. A mother passing puts her hand over her daughter’s eyes, outraged. You see, Sander says, the French don’t all hold with whatever in the world we’re seeing. Adding, you don’t have the beginning of an understanding of my depravity, dear innocent Adriaan. Those kids over there, I’m in love with their vermetelheid. They’re high-wire walkers, you know? Look at Rabbit Nose. Who was taking off a boot. And the other. And expensive-looking implausibly clean tall socks with blue heels and toes. These he rolled, sailor-fashion, and stoppered a boot with them. The mime from the Pompidou’s hands folded in his lap toyed at covert manipulations off and on, causing an American tourist to blinker his wife and knock her harlequin glasses off and to take the name of Jezus in vain. The nipper unknotted his tie, rolled it neatly, and put it in a boot. Off, then, came the middy, studiously folded and laid across both boots. Pants next, leaving him skinnily gemberkoekje tan in blue briefs with a white waistband. His absorbed unconcern has not changed. He sits on his trousers, facing us all. He is, says Sander, taking the sun. Mime and buddy become more affectionate. The gendarmerie is going to turn up at any moment, I say, and take us all to the Bastille. Naw, says Sander, not a bit of it. Some Americans in Hawaiian shirts, print cotton dresses, cameras, and sunglasses stroll by just in time to be scandalized by Mime and buddy rolling into an embrace, or tussle of horseplay, or fight. It looked like any of the three, or all of them at once. Whatever it was, it pleased the boy, who opened his mouth and squinched his eyes. After the Americans came a squadron of Germans filling the whole quai across, gabbling. Sander on our side and the boy on his had to draw back their legs to keep from tripping cackling and honking Germans, who were of course not looking where they were going. One of them, indeed, snagged a foot on Mime and buddy, and pitched forward flat most satisfyingly. Blither blither went the Germans, chicken-eyed. Piss off! shouted Mime, whose anger made him handsomer. Cons, said Buddy. Schweinscheisse! Sander bellowed, standing. Inevitable, I had to agree afterwards, that Sander would free his considerable peester in naked light, from the pod of his slip, and stand as if grandly bored, especially by German tourists. Comedy loves the young in the full pitch of their sweet idiocy, and rather than a cold jolt of adrenalin I got instead, god-dank, the golden Apuleian fun of it all, and was felled by a laughing fit that felt so good I caved in to it. The Mime cut me a smiling glance, decided that the moment was worth risking French wit on, hooted the Germans away, and joined my laughter. His friend crinkled his eyes, dinted the corners of his mouth in a silvery grin, and we all came together, ridiculously indecent for a public place, including the boy, who got his hair mussed by Mime and a tweak on the nose from Sander. We are, I said, a Dutch philosopher, moi, and a Dutch painter, mon jeune ami. They were, Mime and buddy, students, Parisians, friends. Taking the sun. We had routed the Germans. For a while, said Mime, rocking the flat of his hand. For him, he added, nodding toward the boy, who was fetching his things and bringing them over to be with us, explaining that he knows one does not ever talk to strangers and that his name is Bernard. Alexandre, Adrien, Georges, Michel.

  1 THERMIDOR

  The field of cyclists on the wet Champs Elysees, some sixty of them, is wholly silent except for the whish of their tires over stone. Their crouch over their handlebars is like a cougar on the pounce. The colors of their maillots, striped, checkered, banded, c
ontrast brightly with the grey of Paris under rain. We watch them double back at the Étoile, return, veer off at the Louvre, race along the Seine, flow onto an overpass, circle the Louvre, enter the Elysées again. They reached Paris yesterday, and have been cycling all day in pelting rain, around and around these last laps. It is not our Dutch champion Joop Zoetemelk who sails with hands clasped over his head in triumph under the Merlin Plage banner at the foot of the Elysées, but his daily time is still less than any other’s, and at the finish line the Mayor of Paris helps him pull on the yellow jersey of the winner and kisses him on both cheeks.

  2 THERMIDOR

  A basket of pears. Blue tablecloth. Freckled Pomona.

  Mon titre est d’avoir suivi la route opposée à celle de vos charlatans législatifs, comme Platon et Voltaire, Owen et St.-Simon qui veulent changer la nature de l’homme, changer les ressorts que Dieu a placés dans nos âmes pour les diriger. Je suis le premier, le seul qui ait cherché et trouvé l’art d’utiliser ces ressorts, sans y rien changer. Fourier, La Fausse Industrie.

  For Pastoraal VI, four meters by one and a half, Sander needed two children. Asked Bruno if he could pose his, and got, Kaatje shooing them in before her yesterday afternoon, een echt nimf in de dop en bosgod snuiter, de jongeheer Hans, de liefje Saartje. They are to be figures on a white ground in the right third of the long canvas, which sat on the big easel already framed in thin black lathing, its other images finished: four silly sheep, very Hokusai of line, black-shanked and with sharp grey-brown triangles for hooves, a suds of milky wool crushed thickest along the ventral swag, clerical of face, their eyes serenely composed upon the simple thought of grass, and, with receding vagueness, the flightier notion of humping one’s mother. Sander has placed these citizens in stacked perspective to the left and up. Beneath them, a Sicilian basket of gourds and melons, a moth on a squash. The moth occurs again, a bastaardsatijnvlinder, as big as and to the right of the basket. Center, his long back to us, a boy seventeen, atletisch long en modernaakt except for the sportief supporter the model was wearing (Hieronymus Naaldboom’s son Jaap), the waistband belting the small of his back, trim straps curving around the buttocks from the hips and insinuating to a bushy juncture at the perineum with the dip of the cup. Long legs wide apart, a blue javelin grasped upright in his left hand, its slant making a clean diagonal between him and the sheep, basket, moth.