“No,”
“Any experience?”
“No.”
“References?”
“Only the Consulate.”
Gaston grinned, flashing his crooked teeth. “But they are paid to lie. That’s their job.”
“And I will need to bring my pug,” Lavinia added.
“Well, that decides it.” He sighed. “You’re hired. But only if you agree to brush the cat and always wear that perfume.”
Lavinia stood up and brushed the wrinkles from her lap. She was smiling but trying not to smile, as she said, “That’s going to cost extra.”
“Fortunately, I am a man of means,” Monsieur Lesseur replied.
It was almost two months before Lavinia saw Gaston Lesseur again. A large brown envelope had been brought to her door the following day containing a key, a week’s salary, a brief note with a list of tasks, and the yellow ribbon.
“The fellow delivering this packet to you is Jean-Marc,” the note concluded in a postscript longer than the text: “Don’t be afraid of him. He’s not fierce, just very slow. He’ll come by the Feydeau apartment most afternoons, at around three o’clock, to see if you need assistance. Anything you can find to occupy him would be appreciated. He particularly likes to polish shoes, Consider him your assistant, if it pleases you.”
Lavinia was baffled; foreign currency always had a slightly unreal quality to it, like play money, but Gaston’s stack of freshly minted banknotes, tied with a bow like a pile of love letters, still crisp and bright with printer’s ink, looked like loot, or pirate’s booty, something from a child’s game rather than wages to be earned.
Jean-Marc was also a surprise. Pudgy, with thinning hair and the stoop of someone life has prematurely aged, the only thing Lavinia found even vaguely alarming about him was the sour smell of yeast he exuded. It was clear from looking at him that he was retarded, but not severely so. While Lavinia opened the banker’s envelope and examined its contents, Jean-Marc stood stork-like at her door, counting softly to himself while he balanced on one leg, folding the other up behind him and holding it by the ankle until he lost his balance, shifted weight and started again on the other leg. His eyes, hooded and saurian, and his chin shadowed by the need for a shave, or his handful of pointy teeth the color of twine might have lent him an ominous air, but didn’t. Even contracted with purpose, concentration squinting his eyes and creasing his brow, his face was gentle.
Lavinia was too taken aback to be anything but charmed by Jean-Marc: that Boswell liked him secured his favor and made it easy for her to find a place for him within her afternoons. By the end of her first week she realized Gaston Lesseur had been right; everybody needed an assistant. When she found nothing else for him to do, she would have Jean-Marc take Boswell for an afternoon walk she choreographed to pass by the post office, the tabac and the bookseller on the Quai Voltaire who kept dog treats in a mason jar under his chair.
Her work on the Feydeau’s estate was more absorbing than she had initially anticipated. Lavinia had begun by cataloguing the furniture, room by room, formal to private, and then the paintings, starting with the oils and then gouache, watercolor, prints and finally bric-a-brac while Jean-Marc counted the books, arranging them on the floor in colorful stacks. She supplemented her knowledge of antiques and art with an academic fervor, shaping her free time around lectures on eighteenth-century painting, furniture from the Première République, or the English Regency period. She read essays on forgery, and journals of art criticism. She visited museums and galleries, and familiarized herself with the terms and criteria the critics used to declaim or extoll the decorative arts of the last century and a half.
Those winter afternoons, with the sun slanting low across the floor in burnished bands, jeweled with sparks of dust, filled Lavinia with a sense of happiness so simple and quiet she mistook it for something else. She ascribed the calm bedazzlement that overcame the room to the satisfaction of purpose, and to the light, as if its glow had infused the air with such contentment that it muted sound, reducing the world to the ticking of a mantel clock.
Jean-Marc continued to bring her weekly envelopes from Gaston, in which a note on pale blue stationery always accompanied the packet of banknotes which were always tied up in ribbon, like a present, a colorful millefeuille suggesting something much more festive and playful than money. The notes, written in a large loopy hand, on paper the color of a robin’s egg, were an unpredictable assemblage of instructions and thoughts and quotations. Lavinia found herself looking so forward to the notes that the money became increasingly meaningless.
“Please arrange to have the marquetry on the dining room table repaired before it’s removed for auction,” and “Monsieur Joubert the concierge will come Tuesday to fix the broken shutter,” or “The piano needs to be tuned. Let me know what it costs and I’ll send a check with Jean-Marc,” were the kind of quotidian instructions which might be coupled with a thought about the moss covering the statue of Renée Vivien, the glow of the cobblestones at dusk, or the rank smell of the Seine after rain. Sometimes he would quote a line of poetry from Verlaine or a witticism of Voltaire or a sentence from a book he was reading. Occasionally Gaston would make an inquiry which Lavinia didn’t know whether or not to answer:
Dear Mademoiselle Gibbs,
Are you keeping warm this winter? Le Figaro talks about severe cold yet I awake with a damp brow in a room as overheated as the Congo, mistaking the radiator for the rasp of an adder. Have you ever spent any time in the tropics? The heat gets in your blood like a fever and surfaces in dreams when you least expect it. So many things are like that: certain memories, the voice of a childhood friend, an irrational fear, the refrain of a song you’ve only heard once or the scent of a woman’s perfume combining orange blossoms, jasmine and musk.
It snowed lightly but repeatedly, dusting the roofs and rails, smudging the edges of the buildings and erasing the world on the other side of the Seine. The trees along the river were hung like chandeliers with ice, their frozen pendants sparkling like cut glass when they caught the light. The wind, as it rounded the corner of the Rue Mazarine, whistling up eddies of snow, sliced like a whip, and the moist air from the Seine made the cold more penetrating. Nonetheless, Lavinia found herself walking to work early, Boswell tucked under her right arm in place of a baguette, and the previous evening’s Paris Soir rolled up under the other. She was content to read about the events of the world a day or two late, but 34, Rue Vaneau, was exerting a pull as powerful as that of a planet drawing her into its orbit.
There were signs of Gaston in the apartment from time to time, a wizened end of a cigar, left in a Limoges saucer that had been commandeered as an ashtray, or an empty decanter unstoppered on the desk or a bowl of candied almonds by the bed, and the bedclothes rumpled. Once she found a rabbit’s foot dangling at the end of the yellow ribbon, suspended from the top of the kitchen door frame with an upholstery tack. Lavinia supposed it was another level of training for the gray cat, like the batting ball at which her brothers used to swing that hung from one of the lower limbs of a sugar maple behind their summer house.
She had begun writing back to her employer, and would arrive at work early to indulge in the pleasure of rereading Gaston’s notes before moving on to the even greater pleasure of replying. Her notes would be sent to Gaston via Jean-Marc, who took such evident delight in having the additional commission to perform that Lavinia was able to persuade herself that the correspondence was just part of her job.
Monsieur Lesseur,
I saw the gendarmes being drilled this afternoon in front of Les Invalides. Their boots were so black against the snow and their faces so young I was unexpectedly moved. It reminded me of a haiku I can no longer recall: something about the searing beauty of cherry bark in the rain. For several hours afterwards I felt a terrible sense of grief. Am I going mad?
Sometimes Gaston would respond by embroidering her themes, musing for example on the nature of sanity, the peculiar dif
ficulty of the seventeen-syllable form of poetry, or the sartorial panache of the French uniform. Often too, he would respond obliquely, with just a quotation:
Dear Mademoiselle Gibbs,
“And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten…”
—Swinburne
P.S. Are you feeding your dog my candied almonds?
To which Lavinia replied:
Monsieur Lesseur,
I see in the papers that the unions are getting noisy again. Do you think I need a raise?
To which Gaston responded:
Mademoiselle Gibbs,
I think you need better reading matter and to be taken dancing. Unemployment statistics now are so demoralizing we are obliged to celebrate our good fortune at every occasion. I’ll have Jean-Marc bring a bottle of champagne tomorrow, Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame, so that you can toast your exceptional luck.
Lavinia understood it as a game involving volley, but not like tennis, with its rapid focus on movement; this more closely resembled badminton, in which there was a sense of elongated time before the satisfying pong of response, setting the shuttlecock in flight on a new path to the same place. In this way, expectation bound the players to each other more surely than any visible tether. It also made possible greater revelation than would have been likely face-to-face.
Gaston sent single sentences, “Thank God 1937 is almost over,” and questions, “Is it true that in America you eat the corncobs that we feed our pigs here in France?” He made confessions, “Last night I couldn’t sleep so I ate an entire tin of marrons glacés, using the tip of a knife to spear them in to my mouth, which I haven’t done since I was fourteen and now I can’t think why I waited so long to repeat the pleasure.”
He wrote as if he were discovering a language, experimenting with its forms, moving between the hortatory and the interrogatory, between specifics and generalities, playing with inflections and innuendo. His notes, frequent and yet surprising, interwove shards of his life with the tasks he delegated weekly. Much of the work required to probate the estate was dull but Gaston Lesseur’s directives, sparked with humor and jeweled with fragments of poetry, became for Lavinia offerings, verbal bouquets which flowered within her.
It was through these exchanges, too, that Lavinia came to know a great many things about her employer. She learned how Delphine, Jean-Marc’s mother, had been the cook at his father’s home and when Gaston’s feuding parents could not agree on which one of them he would visit for school holidays, he would be sent to Normandy, with Delphine and her damaged son, Jean-Marc.
They would stay with Delphine’s brother in his cottage near Etretat which was always damp and cold, but the locus nonetheless for some of Gaston’s fondest childhood memories. While Delphine canned fruit and cleaned the grimy cottage, obviously undisturbed by a mop since their last visit, Gaston would take Jean-Marc for rambles which kept them out until the light began to fade. They would walk along the cliffs or down along the shoreline, where the salt from the spray of breaking waves settled on their clothes and when they licked their arms they could taste the ocean. Staring out at the horizon, he would let the sound of the surf mesmerize him as he dreamed of sailing away on any one of the boats that disappeared from view.
Lavinia also came to learn that the name of the gray cat was Grisette, brought as a kitten to Marcel Feydeau by the little daughter of one of the artists he helped pro bono. The story of the cat was complicated, emerging layer by layer, like a line of music in a score to which instruments in counterpoint continue to be added. The gift had charmed Marcel Feydeau, so against his better judgment, he kept the animal, as well as the name the little girl had chosen without knowing the cat was male. It had amused Feydeau that the little girl didn’t know grisette was the term for ladies of questionable morals. It had been a source of amusement to his family too, who were relieved that the only “grisette” in Uncle Marcel’s life was hunting mice not men. Monsieur Feydeau had been unable to intercede successfully on the painter’s behalf the next time he was in trouble, and before an appeal could be filed, the painter hanged himself in jail. Thereafter, Marcel viewed the cat as a reproach and felt obliged to spoil it without ever being able to love it.
Watching Marcel Feydeau interact with his cat, Gaston had come to understand how the same dynamic had informed his own father’s relationship with him, and fueled the unhappiness that was expressed in his father’s guilty generosity and Gaston’s guilty ingratitude. When he realized this, Gaston began to love the cat, and foolishly saw himself in the gray tomcat that would rather fight in the courtyard and on the rooftop with local strays than abide for very long the comforts of a loveless home.
Once, when Lavinia had run out of her perfume, she wore for a few days the eau de toilette she had received as a gift the previous Christmas from her tobacconist. The gift had the unintended consequence of so embarrassing Lavinia that she never returned to the tabac, going two blocks out of her way to make her subsequent purchases on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
By the end of the week, a bottle of Arpège was left on the mantel in the library with a note:
Dear Mademoiselle Gibbs,
Please remember the terms of your employment, and do not hesitate to inform me when you require supplies necessary for you to continue to perform your duties.
Lavinia was flattered that Gaston had noticed her use of an alternate scent and was delighted by the gift. She had never been given perfume by a man before and it seemed suggestive in an entirely disembodied way. As invisible on the skin as an unacknowledged caress, it left behind just as sure a trace in the memory. She returned with pleasure to her previous scent, noting with satisfaction how much more complex it was than the cloying eau de toilette, which she poured into the bidet, making her water closet reek with girlish innocence for days. By the time Lavinia saw Gaston Lesseur again, she was already in love with him although she didn’t know it and would not have admitted it if she did.
The second time Lavinia saw him he was perched precariously on the backrest of an upholstered reading chair, reaching for the chandelier to replace a missing crystal pendant. “You don’t inhabit much the nether realm between the earth and sky, like the rest of us, do you, Monsieur Lesseur?” Lavinia asked, as she unpinned her fur hat, trying to supress a smile.
“A man should have range, I think. Don’t you agree, Mademoiselle Gibbs,” Gaston replied, completing his delicate task before turning smoothly to smile at her. She noticed her heart was racing as she hung up her coat and took her place at the desk, where the dealer estimates and auction contracts were piled, waiting for her to impose order.
Lavinia lit a cigarette and shuffled through some of the papers, as if looking for one in particular. Because she had her back to the rest of the room, she could not tell if she was being watched, but she was so acutely aware of Gaston’s presence, it didn’t matter: she felt as exposed as in the dreams in which she suddenly found herself naked at a train station or concert.
She sharpened a pencil self-consciously and corrected her posture. Then Lavinia returned to the folders, selecting one marked Completed Sales: Receipts, turning the sheet of paper over with a brisk flick of her wrist, making her bracelets chime as if to testify to her work.
“Mademoiselle Gibbs,” Monsieur Lesseur finally said, “please stop tormenting me with your querulous jewelry and tell me if you enjoyed the champagne I sent. It was my last bottle from that year.”
Gaston had stretched himself out on the couch, an arm flung behind his head and his stocking feet crossed on the opposing armrest. Grisette padded across the floor and jumped up on to his belly and started purring loudly.
“I did, thank you,” she replied, wishing she had thought of something more engaging to say, and wondering if she should thank him for the perfume or if that would ruin the lovely conceit he’d constructed in which it was a necessity not a luxury. He didn’t speak again and Lavinia couldn’t tell what he was doing, or
if, like the cat, he had decided to have an afternoon slumber. When she was able to steal a glance, he appeared to be reading, but Lavinia couldn’t be certain he really was.
The Feydeau apartment had begun slowly shedding its contents, so that the rooms seemed to have grown thin over the passing months, like a consumptive wasting away, revealing corners and angles like the jut of increasingly prominent cheekbones. Some rooms, such as the dining room, were entirely empty but for the ornate molding and woodwork, like a stage on which the shifting light made small dramas starring the occasional odd item left in the center of the floor by Jean-Marc or the housekeeper, a wash bucket or pair of polished shoes. Now, from down the long hallway that led to the bedroom, Lavinia could hear, amplified by the emptiness, the crunching of almonds.
“Boswell!” she called out, and there followed the staccato click of his toenails on the wood floor and a head-shaking sneeze as he entered the room, his mouth frothy with the last traces of the masticated white shell of sugar that coated the nuts.
“Oh merde,” Gaston said, throwing a hand up in an exaggerated gesture of disgust, “that’s why they are so sticky!” Lavinia started laughing, surrendering to a hilarity intensified by the nervous excitement Gaston Lesseur’s unexpected presence had fueled.
“Your dog is fired,” Gaston said.
“You can’t fire him.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would hurt his feelings.”
Gaston was trying not to laugh, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward in the struggle, making his crooked smile even more crooked and contagious. “I see,” he said, watching Boswell circle in the corner before settling down.
“I didn’t realize gargoyles were so sensitive. Or had such rarefied diets.”
“Yes.” Lavinia nodded. “They do.”
Twilight Page 10
