She talks, haphazardly, about Scottish sheep, Scottish moors, Scottish thistles, Scottish seagulls. Whether he likes it or not, he agrees to discuss these rustic and nationalist topics with her. He thinks that “Thistle Song to a Seagull” would be a good song title for Joni Mitchell, but does not mention this.
He listens to her and watches her, distressed. He finds everything about her spellbinding, and our hero hates himself for this spell she casts on him so effortlessly, just by being dazzling, without even trying, and — worse — without even wanting to. So many have fallen, and will still fall for her charms. He does not hold this injustice against her, but it pains him. He can also tell that, whatever lengths he goes to, he will not cast a spell on her. Be careful what you wish for. Can our hero settle for being one of those plain people that others get used to rather than one of the beautiful ones they tire of?
He scrutinizes her, tries in vain to grasp what it is about this young woman he likes so much. She’s not all that pretty, he tells himself several times, before fuming, because, in spite of everything, she is so very pretty. He also suspects that she could easily be even more so: she would simply have to want to be, for his sake.
He finds himself wondering whether it is this denial of love that he is drawn to, captivated by, luring him to the abyss. Isn’t the word “attraction” a synonym for gravitation, he muses, and isn’t a black hole which gives out no light at all far more attractive than all the stars? Rather taken with his cosmological musings, he tries every now and then — though always in vain — to kiss her, injecting as much humor as possible into his advances.
The castle has come into view, with its drawbridge, its moat, and its crenellations. They have come across plenty of carts trundling tourists — some of them in kilts — toward the site, and drawn by horses that expel droppings with impressive regularity. They exchange a considerable number of comments about these droppings, their smell, and the magpies and crows that come and peck at them, and eventually reach the edge of the loch. A dead tree, smothered in moss and ivy, enjoys a second, parasitic life. Our heroine is talking about a swallow that has nested near her window, and asks him whether he thinks there are any eggs in the nest, and how long they will take to hatch. She asks him if swallows build nests as late as July. Hell, he doesn’t have a clue. Out of courtesy, he gives some vague reply about global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the shifts that have been noticed in bird migrations. She gives the impression of being satisfied with that. She points to the swans, so white, on the far bank of Loch Fannich, and wants to sit on a rock by the water’s edge. There is plenty of green grass, neatly mown, but she opts for the hard contours of this rock, and he takes this to mean they will not be here forever. He sits down beside her.
At their feet the water makes a listless lapping sound. In the distance swans move the way swans do, tiny dots of white on the loch’s emerald surface. Nature does nothing for him. What he likes best about swans, if he really had to choose something, is the mimetic elegance of the word itself.
Our hero now wants to leave. His desire for her remains intact, as does his affection, he wants to go home before feeling dirty. He does not want a struggle. He has neither the will to be tyrannical nor the energy to be angry. If he has learned one thing, just one, it is that feelings, affection, and desire have to make or break themselves. And also that love — let’s call it that for convention’s sake — that love, then, is not a stone by the side of the road that never moves, that came from nowhere and appeared out of nothing. Love disappears and comes back, it changes, it shifts, it falls, and picks itself back up even when we think it has died.
But for now, he needs to go.
He wants to help her get rid of him. And he wants to do it fast.
He presses her. A few questions and he gets her to say she no longer cares for him. And, more important, that she no longer wants him. He doubts this is altogether true, but it is still what he wants to hear at the moment, to give him the strength to leave. He pushes the point so much that she pronounces the fateful words. He can tell she is relieved, and immediately knows he is at least freeing her from feelings of guilt toward the Other, who will be joining her in three days’ time. He smiles. Says, It doesn’t matter. Adds, I’m going to go home to Paris, this afternoon if I can. If not, tomorrow.
She says, Scotland’s beautiful, stay, you could explore. He replies, No, it’s you I came to see, not Scotland. He adds, I’d have gone to Jackson if you’d been in Jackson. Not that he actually has anything against Jackson.
And he stands up.
I’ll take you back if you like, our hero concludes. Hero is the very word at this point.
8
The beauty of Glen Carron Park, still.
A surprise.
A longer conversation.
On the way back our hero and heroine walk side by side. They take it more slowly. The sheep are still there, peaceful and woolly. The tension has gone.
He is sure he will go now, completely. Because he is not going in order to leave her. Quite the opposite, he is going because this is where the risk of losing her is at its greatest. The sheep, the broom, the moor, the blue of the sky, everything feels like a personal enemy to him. Scotland in its entirety wants him to fail. Our heroine may be keeping him at a distance, but it is not because she no longer wants him, it is because she cannot do anything with him here. There is too much weight, too much guilt, too much lying. That is what he would like to think, but it is also what he senses. He is going, he knows he must, so that somewhere else, perhaps, later, it may be possible to be with her again.
So, in order to be sure, he subjects our heroine to the question again. She dithers, dangles, he does not insist on any tender gestures, only words. And she lets those anticipated words slip, they reiterate her rejection, but the color of them is smoother, she no longer denies her desire. He asks, Do you want me? You don’t ask the right questions, she replies. That is enough for him.
Our hero suddenly stops walking. He smiles as he points out a caterpillar crossing the path. It is brown with glints of gold, gleaming, covered in hairs, and crawling over the asphalt. It looks like a processionary caterpillar, minus the procession. They both stop to look at it. It is a quiet moment together, a necessary moment. He advises her not to touch it because its fine hairs could well be urticant. Now that’s a word he rather likes, urticant, it seems a while since he has used it. Then they set off again, abandoning it to its perilous fate as an urticant caterpillar.
Our hero now wants to reassure her, soothe her. He knows how to: he finds the right words, makes her laugh, thinks she seems more cheerful. They are walking through a strenuously landscaped wood, she is making fun of upwardly mobile Scots in the brand-new twenty-first century. She talks about her neighbors, of all the nouveaux riches created by the housing boom. He listens, is amused, makes occasional comments. The fact that the conversation is artificial does not bother him.
This newfound calm in her, this peacefulness, rekindles the desire and affection in him that he had almost driven out. She is walking within reach, so serene, and he wants to take her in his arms more than ever. Images of her fragile nudity come back to him, and echoes of the extreme words uttered in the half-light. A great wave of memories. He does not know how to fight this off. He never has.
So, when they finally reach the pub, when she suggests they have lunch (or was he the one who planted the idea?), he is surprised to find his hopes renewed. When she asks if he would like to sit next to her, he puts his hand on hers and she plays briefly with his fingers. He kisses her, tenderly, on the lips. She accepts the kiss, then pushes him away, gently. They order some mineral water, Sparkling, please (him), and a beer, A glass of stout (her), and One panini (just one for both of them). It comes served with thick greasy chips and a salad of raw onion rings that she devours eagerly. Her breath is like Claudette Colbert’s in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife when she rejects Gregory Peck’s advances by gobbling white onions. Our hero cannot be
sure of either the film or the male lead, but he would have no trouble triumphing over the smell of onions if our heroine decided to kiss him.
He may never have learned anything about women but he now knows that the panini is the Scottish national dish, way ahead of the haggis.
She finishes her beer, down in one.
Please take me back, she says.
He nods.
9
Ridiculous business with an insect.
First separation.
Tinkerbell.
Our hero takes our heroine back. He is upset. The route from his handsome redbrick hotel to the monstrous A32 is far more painful in this direction. He keeps his eyes on the road but drives too far over to the left, and drives badly. He cannot get himself to concentrate. All of a sudden a large buzzing insect flits into the car through his open window and settles on his arm. Is it a horsefly, a hornet? It’s just a bumblebee, but our hero writhes, making the car swoop into the gutter. They stop and the bumblebee flies out almost immediately. Everything is fine, the heroine is unharmed, he does not get out to assess any possible damage. Just apologizes. And thinks to himself, Shame this trip’s not as much fun as “The Flight of the Bumblebee.”
Our hero sets off again. This incident has opened up fault lines in his cheerful facade. He is now having trouble finding his words, being amusing, even maintaining his smile. He cannot help saying he will call her when he is in Paris, that everything will be easier, then immediately regrets his words, which seem as pointless as they are irrelevant. He’s still seventeen. Hell, how long’s he going to go on being seventeen? Why can’t his heart age like his skin and his eyes? In ten years’ time, or twenty, will he still be tormented by passionate longings he can’t even hope to fulfill? Is it a sign of strength, weakness, or madness, not being able to grow old?
To date, there are no answers.
He drops her at the corner of the S70, near the sign for Inchnadamph. Some day soon he will go and destroy Inchnadamph. They extricate the bicycle from the trunk. She mounts it. Our heroine says, Call me to let me know when you’re leaving. She kisses him, he watches her pedal away.
From this line on, our hero notably forgets to smile.
He heads back to his hotel. A glance at his watch. It is not even four o’clock.
He has not yet seen his room. It is enormous with a very wide bed. You could get three people in there. Ha ha ha, our hero sneers. The bathroom too is enormous, has a bathtub and a shower and two washbasins.
Getting back to Paris the same day proves impossible. The first plane leaves from Inverness toward noon the following day. He reserves a seat. It is expensive, but when you are not loved money is no object. Only then does he call our heroine. He would like to see her one last time, he cannot imagine spending this last evening alone, in this hotel. She does not pick up. He hangs up, takes his cell phone into the bathroom — in fact he is never without it — and checks for the umpteenth time that day how much battery he has left, more concerned about its levels than a deep-sea diver about those in his oxygen tank. He runs himself a bath. Then forgets the water filling the tub and takes a shower. The degree of distress and confusion in our hero is such that the reader can but sympathize with him.
The shower soothes him, he stays under the flow of warm water for a long time. He really has lost weight, at least there’s that. He dries off, looks at himself at length in the mirror. His body has still not aged much. But the hair is receding from his forehead, wrinkles are forming and bags developing under his eyes. Skin, like tree bark, shows the years clearly. He tries to see in himself the old man already threatening to appear. When he leans his face forward, his features slump, and he shudders to think that this is the image he presented when they were making love. He steps away from the mirror, looking his reflection in the eye, as if backing away from a tiger.
He tries to think back, to understand where and when the affection he thought she felt for him died. Died? He is not prepared to accept that yet. Not out of pride or self-esteem. He has little of either. He suspects she is stifling her affection, suppressing it. He knows women can do this, and it is probably also true of some men. He still wants the right to see her again in Paris, to blow on the last embers. He is not afraid of this unimaginative metaphor.
It is still early, too early to call her again anyway. So our hero leaves his room, goes down to the pub and, not begrudging the Glen Carron Park a single penny, chooses a table facing it. He fearlessly confronts the green sign: Eilan Castle, 2.1 miles.
May I sit here? The voice is a woman’s, the language French, and our hero is startled. But it is not our heroine and, besides, it was not her voice. He nods, she sits down. She is very young with short brown hair, fine features, and clear eyes. She smiles at him, he feels happy, or let’s say reassured, to find her pretty. She adds, I’m back on duty in a while, I work at the hotel. Our hero recognizes her, she checked him in at reception. She eats a salad quickly, wiping the corners of her mouth with every bite. It is a graceful gesture, delicate. She speaks French with an almost imperceptible Slavic accent. She is Polish, this is a summer job, next year she will be in Paris for a year, acting onstage. She says, What I really want is to perform Feydeau and Beckett. She brought the two authors together spontaneously, and it makes her laugh, he finds it funny too. Then she says, Are you French? I know, I looked at your passport. She narrows her eyes, impishly. Our hero thinks she could just as easily be an ingenue as a soubrette. I noticed you live in Paris, will you come and see me in a play? Of course, he replies. Are you here for vacation? she asks next. He hesitates, stammers, admits he is going home tomorrow. Something unexpected. That is the word he uses. What a shame, she says. He agrees.
She suddenly glances at the clock. She grumbles: I’m on duty, merde! She does say merde very prettily, thinks our hero.
As she is getting up, he asks her where in Poland she is from. With a last smile she says, From Lublin, takes her plate, and disappears.
Tinkerbell, for real.
Lublin? Our hero knows it. He went there thirty years ago. He visited neither the cathedral of Saint John the Baptist nor the Royal Castle. Some miles away are the camps. Majdanek, Sobibor, and Belzec.
Whose granddaughter could this young woman be? he wonders. He counts the years and corrects himself: great-granddaughter. When, full of anger and tears, he walked through that tall grass, beneath what was left of the watchtowers and barbed wire fences at Majdanek, this young woman had not yet been born. His musing about her parentage didn’t mean much in the first place. It means nothing at all.
Now here he is alone again. His watch says only five o’clock but it has not stopped. It is with a guilty feeling of capitulation that our hero surrenders once more to love’s annihilating embrace. He does not fight the downward pull, and slips into prostration, without resistance.
He is going to do something stupid. He does it.
He gets back in his car. He drives, carefully this time, to the S70, then turns left and takes the road he has seen her come down. He goes all the way to the place where her mother lives. He has no trouble remembering the name, because it is rather like “leprechaun.” He looks at the stony paths leading down to the river, and tries to spot the mansion overlooking the loch, as she described it to him. It hurts him to think she could be so close by. But didn’t he come here precisely to feel this pain? He doesn’t like the darkness deep in his soul, constantly striving to suffer.
He is afraid he might come across her, on her bicycle. With fate pursuing him so doggedly, he could also run into her mother’s car, with her in the passenger seat. It would make a wonderful scene from a film, some sentimental comedy with achingly British humor (he can just see Hugh Grant playing his part). The title could be something like Over the Moor, or maybe Inchnadamph Crossing. But we are not in a movie theater.
He stops by the side of the road, a little way before a narrow stone bridge. He opens his cell phone and dials her number. Just then, not far away, the angelus
rings.
10
A deluxe dinner.
Poet, poet.
A little gift that has to wend its way.
You’re calling me right when the angelus is ringing, our heroine shouts to smother the bell’s high-pitched sound. This is how he discovers just how close he is to her house. He scans the surrounding countryside but sees no bell tower. He tells her when he is leaving, suggests they have dinner together. There has been no war or battle, and yet he wants to make peace. But — even though it is half past six — her mother is already preparing a meal. She says they could meet in two hours’ time, in the usual place, for a drink.
Our hero goes back to the hotel. He has his dinner on the pub’s sunny terrace, choosing a deluxe Thai chicken curry. A dish that turns out to be a sort of chicken supreme, only more bland.
He heads back up to his room. From her desk at reception, the young Pole gives him a friendly, almost conspiratorial wave, but the elevator door closes. How strange, our hero thinks, there’s a woman I could easily fall in love with, in the space of a few hours. He can see in her a spontaneous sincerity, a sense of mischief devoid of calculation or artifice. That young woman knows who she is, he speculates, so much so that she’s bound to have the nerve to step fearlessly into someone else’s shoes. Perhaps that is the characteristic that makes great actors. If he dared (but he will not), he would lay at this girl’s feet the extravagant love he bears within him for another. The emotional equivalent of making a transfer from a bank account. But would she accept the deposit?
The Intervention of a Good Man Page 3
