Miss Prim looked at him aghast, then abruptly unfastened her seat belt.
“Stop the car immediately,” she said with barely contained rage.
“What?”
“I said, stop the car immediately. I’m not staying in here with you a moment longer.”
The Man in the Wing Chair pulled over, turned off the ignition, and lifted both hands from the steering wheel.
“Why the hell must you always be so extreme?”
“Extreme? You think I’m extreme? You get me to open my heart to you, you promise to be tactful, and then when I fall into your trap and confide my concerns, you respond with an insult. Do I need to remind you that you called me a fool? You, who pride yourself on being gentlemanly. You, no one else.”
“Yes, me,” he replied abruptly. “Make no mistake, Prudencia, I’m a man like any other, maybe worse than others. I hope it doesn’t come as a shock to you because it definitely doesn’t to me.”
She made to open the car door, but he put out an arm and firmly held her back.
“Listen carefully. I called you a fool because I think getting upset over what you told me is to behave like a fool. I’m a frank man, probably a little too frank, and you’re right, I’m not very tactful. But you should know me well enough by now to understand that though I may not be a model of tact, I’m a decent person. If I tell you to confide in me it’s because I want to help. So let me speak and listen to what I have to say.”
“Only if you take back your insult,” she said stonily.
“Fine, I take back what I said. But, for the record, it wasn’t an insult. I was describing your behavior, I wasn’t describing you.”
“Please, don’t start with your theological distinctions. You’re not going to trick me again.”
“Would you please just listen?” he insisted, pronouncing the words slowly and deliberately.
Miss Prim raised her eyes and looked at him. The day had started badly. It had been a mistake to attend the meeting at the tearoom. It had also been a mistake to let him give her a lift to the village. Had she not accepted his offer, she wouldn’t have had to listen to all that praise heaped upon the beauty of another woman. Nor would she have got carried away flirting with the young vet, much less spouted all that nonsense about how much she liked animals. She, who had always been afraid of dogs and disliked cats. How could she have been so stupid?
“No, you’re right, I am a fool,” she said with tears in her eyes.
He took her tenderly by the hand and looked at her with an expression that she didn’t know how to interpret.
“Come on, you’re not a fool, Prudencia. You just act like one. Please don’t cry. People like me can’t handle tears; we haven’t been granted that gift. Listen to me: the fact is, there are some things that make you suffer, and they make you suffer because you don’t fully understand them, that’s all.”
She wiped away her tears and smiled.
“Between us it always boils down to that, doesn’t it? You understand things that I don’t.”
“No, that’s not right, at least not quite. Will you listen to me now?”
Miss Prim assured him that she would. He switched on the engine, offered her another sip of brandy, and shifted in his seat before speaking.
“First of all, there’s no such thing as definitive victory over one’s faults, Prudencia. It’s not an arena in which mere willpower works. Our nature is defective, like an old, broken locomotive, so however hard we try, we’re bound to fail. Getting upset about it is absurd and, though it might make you angry to hear it, arrogant too. You won’t like this but, when we fail, what we have to do is ask for help from the machine’s maker. And always allow the maker to improve things with a good application of oil from time to time.”
“That’s a religious explanation, and I’m not a religious woman. Please don’t use that argument with me, it’s not valid,” she said, her nose red from crying as well as from the cold.
He leaned his head back and laughed.
“That answer isn’t worthy of a lucid mind, Prudencia. And it’s a product of the anti-Thomist education you’re so proud of. The question here, and in any other discussion, is not whether my argument is religious, but whether it’s right. Can’t you see the difference? Give me your counterargument, Prudencia. Say you think that what I’ve said is wrong and explain why, but don’t tell me that my argument fails because it’s religious. The only reason it might not work here or anywhere else is simply because it’s wrong.”
“All right then, I’m telling you it doesn’t work because it’s wrong.”
“Really? That means you think human beings can achieve perfection and maintain moral excellence through their own efforts. Don’t you think that to err is human? Do you really think man never fails?”
“Of course I don’t, I know perfectly well that it’s human to make mistakes and that nobody’s perfect.”
“In other words, deep down you think that a large part of what I’ve said is true. The thing is, you only recognize the truth when it’s dressed up as secularism.”
Miss Prim looked at the Man in the Wing Chair through the growing darkness and wondered bitterly why, even at such gloomy moments, a conversation with him was so much more interesting than any she had with other people; why the most obstinate and odious of his species was also the most stimulating to talk to.
“I’m cold. Would you mind taking me home now?”
“Mind? I’m always happy to take you home, Prudencia.”
3
On Tuesday and Friday mornings the two youngest children of the Man in the Wing Chair’s household attended Miss Mott’s school. The older ones, though too advanced for the teacher’s lessons, also received part of their education outside the home. Three times a week they had language classes at Herminia Treaumont’s house; there were two weekly biology sessions at the village doctor’s surgery; they studied history with Horacio Delàs; botany with Hortensia Oeillet; music with Emma Giovanacci, and so on. It was on a Tuesday morning that the two little ones burst into the sitting room full of news.
“Grandmama! Miss Prim! Miss Mott’s husband’s come back!” shouted Eksi as she rushed into the room, where the two women were busy, one dealing with her correspondence, the other cataloguing the works of Swift.
“And he’s brought sweets for all the children!” added Deka who ran in after, loaded down with his sister’s books.
The Man in the Wing Chair’s mother arched her right eyebrow and continued writing, telling her grandchildren that they should wait till she’d finished what she was doing. It was Miss Prim who turned around and expressed her delight at this latest development. She knew she herself lacked experience with children, but she didn’t understand the grandmother’s cool reserve and ability to put rules and manners before her grandchildren’s spontaneity. Though at the same time, something inside her told her that the children probably owed their charm and good manners, at least in part, to her military discipline.
“Miss Mott’s husband? Are you sure? How exciting!” she cried, gently closing a third edition of The Battle of the Books.
“That’s right, tell Miss Prim all about it and let your poor grandmother finish her letters,” said the old lady with a glance at the librarian.
The children couldn’t give many details about what had happened at the school. At break time, when they were playing in the garden, they’d heard the teacher murmur: “My God, he’s come back.”
They had all turned to see, standing at the gate, a tall, heavily built man in an old coat and muddy boots, smiling, full of emotion.
“His eyes were swimming with tears,” said Eksi, whose precocious love of reading exceeded her verbal fluency by quite a margin.
“You mean brimming, dear,” her grandmother corrected her, peering at the child fondly over her reading glasses.
“Miss Mott’s husband is as big as one of the giants in Gulliver, Grandmama,” said Deka.
The old lady said she hoped that Mr
. Mott’s apology to his wife for all his years of absence would be at least half as big as Swift’s giants, and that Miss Mott would make him pay an equally large penance.
“Grandmama, if Miss Mott is married, why isn’t she called Mrs. Mott?” asked Eksi.
“Well, because Mr. Mott left the house one day and never came back. You’re much too young to understand, but if there’s one thing worse than being a widow it’s being married to a man who’s disappeared. Poor Eugenia Mott,” said the older woman to Miss Prim, “couldn’t bear people continually asking where her husband was, so one day she decided to become a ‘Miss,’ start a new life, and forget all about trying to explain.”
“A very sensible decision,” said the librarian.
“My thoughts exactly.”
As the weeks passed, Miss Prim had felt increasingly at ease in the old lady’s company. She didn’t approve of her patrician rudeness—to do so would have been contrary to her own nature, and Miss Prim never did anything that was contrary to her nature—but she was starting to appreciate the somewhat sharp-edged candor that showed itself in merciless judgments as well as in deliciously sincere praise. In the older woman’s character the librarian had found an elucidation of the amazing toughness she’d always admired in venerable dynastic families: the cast-iron capacity to preserve one’s own opinions and habits through wars, reversals of fortune, and revolutions. The skill of remembering at all times who one was and where one came from rather than bothering, as modern people did, with trying to guess where one was headed.
“Prudencia,” said the old lady, “maybe we should go and visit Eugenia. Women like her often don’t know how to react to such changes. I wouldn’t want that swine to make a fool of her again.”
Miss Prim agreed that the possibility of Eugenia Mott being made a fool of again was something to consider, and she gladly accepted the old lady’s suggestion. They both rose, leaving aside their respective tasks, and prepared to go out into the cold winter afternoon, with the maid as their chauffeur.
Eugenia Mott’s house was on the outskirts of San Ireneo. It was a small stone building with white window frames and a small front door, and shutters in bright red that stood out like brushstrokes in an oil painting. Clumps of beautiful late chrysanthemums lent the house the old-fashioned charm typical of most of the homes in San Ireneo. As they approached, Miss Prim was lost in thought when a line unexpectedly came to mind:
What beauty will save the world?
Who had said that? It must have been a Russian; it sounded just like the kind of thing a Russian would say. It definitely wasn’t obscure, she was sure she’d read it and heard it on countless occasions and in different forms, but she couldn’t remember the author. As she watched the maid struggle with the latch on the garden gate, it occurred to her that the Man in the Wing Chair would probably know.
“The front door’s open, madam. Should we go in?”
“Of course we should. The poor woman must be in the arms of grief,” replied the old lady firmly, pushing the door open and stepping into the narrow hall.
“What beauty will save the world?” the librarian repeated to herself as she followed the old lady to the door of Miss Mott’s living room. The Man in the Wing Chair would know the quotation; she’d ask him as soon as she got back to the house.
“For the love of God, Eugenia!”
Startled by the old lady’s exclamation, Miss Prim peered over her shoulder into the room. There in the middle, Miss Mott could be seen sheltering in someone’s arms. Arms that looked nothing like Prudencia’s idea of the arms of grief, arms that were wrapped around her in a gesture of consolation.
“Hello, Mother, I’m glad you’ve arrived,” said the owner of the arms, gently detaching a tearful Miss Mott from around his neck.
Miss Prim was stunned to see Miss Mott in the arms of the Man in the Wing Chair. Naturally, she wasn’t alarmed; she wasn’t a woman prone to alarm. Nor did she jump to conclusions; Eugenia Mott’s age, together with her natural slow-wittedness, made even a glimmer of romance between the two parties inconceivable. But Miss Prim definitely felt something. It wasn’t jealousy; Miss Prim was contemptuous of people who were tormented by jealousy. Nor was it repulsion; if she was honest with herself, there was nothing about the Man in the Wing Chair that even remotely inspired repulsion. She would even allow that, aesthetically speaking, her employer was the kind of human being who was pleasing to the eye. Miss Prim wasn’t ashamed of this opinion, nor did she draw any conclusions from it. Her deep-rooted appreciation of beauty led her to arrive at her opinion with just the same ease as she would about a swan or a horse.
So what was she feeling? The answer came to her as she silently observed his unhurried explanations and his mother’s stiff attempts to console the afflicted Miss Mott: she felt envy. Envy of the middle-aged village schoolteacher? Miss Prim had to admit that it was so. It wasn’t the fact of seeing Miss Mott in her employer’s arms, but the display of attention and sensitivity that he had never shown her. The librarian was inwardly ashamed by the idea that anyone might read in her eyes what she was thinking. And also, for the first time, she wondered if the moment hadn’t come to ask the ladies of San Ireneo to help her find a husband. After all, a reaction such as this could only be the product of what psychotherapists called transference. Maybe she did need a husband. Maybe she needed one urgently.
“Eugenia, I trust you’re not going to say yes,” said the old lady sternly, drawing Miss Prim out of her marital fantasy.
“Mother . . . ” the Man in the Wing Chair admonished.
“You think I shouldn’t forgive him?” asked the teacher plaintively. “Maybe I shouldn’t, but I’ve dreamed so many times of him returning, and he seems so sorry.”
“Nonsense,” snapped the old lady. “Of course he’s sorry. When he left he was still young and full of life, and the world was exciting. Now he’s reaching the age when we all realize it no longer is exciting.”
“Stop it, Mother, that’s enough.”
“You think I should say no?” whimpered Eugenia Mott.
The Man in the Wing Chair approached his mother before she could reply and said quietly but audibly: “May I remind you it’s her decision. It’s not your life, or mine.”
“She has no experience of this sort of thing, nor do you. I know exactly how to resolve such a situation. She mustn’t take him back. She mustn’t let that man into her house ever again.”
“Why not?” he asked in a low, harsh tone that Miss Prim had never heard him use before. “Because you didn’t?”
The old lady gave her son such a terrible, icy look that Miss Prim thought the door must have blown open and let in a blast of cold air.
“How dare you!” the old lady hissed before rising from her seat, snatching her coat, and rushing from the room, followed by her maid.
He didn’t try to stop her, but once the door had closed he sank down onto the sofa and rested his forehead on his hands.
“It’s all my fault,” moaned Miss Mott, anxiously twisting the belt of her dress. “I should never have called you, I should never have involved you in all this. Now your mother’s angry. I’m so stupid! I don’t have any strength of character, I never had, but I shouldn’t let my problems—”
“Please, Eugenia, don’t worry. None of that is your fault, and in any case it’s not important. Right now we have to discuss how to resolve this, what you want to do with your life and whether there’s a place in it for your husband.”
At this, Prudencia cleared her throat quietly.
“Yes, Miss Prim?” he asked, raising his head and looking at her for the first time since she’d entered the room.
“Would you like me to go after your mother?”
“I’d be very grateful. I can’t leave Miss Mott in this state, but I was a little abrupt with Mother. I’m sorry you had to witness it.”
Again she felt a pang of envy, a strange, inopportune envy combined in equal measure with something very like compassion.
“That’s okay,” she replied, “I’ll go and talk to her.”
As she came out of the house she saw the old lady sitting with her maid on a bench beneath a camellia. Miss Prim approached slowly and sat down beside her. The maid slipped away to fetch the car. Once she’d gone, the old lady spoke.
“I expect you’re wondering why my son said what he did, aren’t you?”
“Definitely not,” she replied. “It’s a family matter.”
“It is indeed.”
“Although, since you’ve asked, there is one thing I don’t understand.”
The old lady turned toward her, interested.
“Tell me, what don’t you understand?”
“It’s just that I’m surprised at your son mentioning something so personal in public. It’s not like him.”
The elderly lady picked up a pale pink camellia blossom from the ground and began sorrowfully to pluck the petals.
“No, it isn’t, but he couldn’t help it.”
“Why not? I’ve never met anyone with his gift for avoiding discourtesy.”
“Why not? Because he blames me, my dear, and when a son blames his mother, much as he might want to avoid it, the feeling surfaces sooner or later.”
Miss Prim now picked up a flower herself and stared at it as she spun it around between her fingertips. It was beginning to grow dark and the air was becoming colder. All of a sudden, she removed her scarf and slipped it around the old lady’s shoulders.
“People sometimes say things without thinking. They’re not expressing what they feel but rather the tension of the moment, or even a desire to win the argument. I don’t think your son was showing his grief or resentment when he said what he did; I think he simply wanted to put an end to the conversation.”
The old lady shivered in a gust of cold wind and then looked straight into the librarian’s eyes.
“My dear Prudencia, there are times in life when we’re all faced with a dilemma we’d rather not have to deal with. For each person the dilemma might come in a different guise, but in essence it’s always the same. There’s a sacrifice to be made, and you have to choose the victim: yourself or those around you.”
Awakening of Miss Prim Page 10
