Her brother-in-law lazily hung an arm across Rita’s shoulders. Jesus winked at the bus driver.
While they waited for each other to finish their lunches, the members of the Misanthrope cast gossiped about some of the absent actors. They agreed that Derek Philips was much too serious and that Meyers Herman tended to mumble his words. They wondered how he’d ever manage to be heard in the huge amphitheater.
“He’s musch too shy,” Sir Ehrnst Riglin said.
“Yet he has the best accent,” said Yalom Basset. “Don’t you think so, Rita?”
“He has a good accent,” Rita said.
“But if he can’t be heard?” Sir Ehrnst said.
“You’re forgetting about the sound system Rita’s organizing for us,” Heidi Lear said.
Miller wasn’t sorry he’d be missing their performance though he was upset that Hartshine might be staying behind to see it. Meanwhile, while they carried on about Meyers Herman’s accent (he hadn’t met the man, he didn’t even recognize the name), Miller listened to someone at the next table who spoke a sort of agitated, gossip-column English in which people planed about the globe, trained from one country to the next, and cabbed through its cities. Idly, he wondered what happened to such people in accidents, whether they were ambulanced to hospitals down whose halls they were gurneyed to operating rooms. The fellow to whom the first man was speaking said “ecomony” for economy and pronounced the b in debt.
Such people were comic and, however idiosyncratic, types. Miller wasn’t amused by them. He was, he thought, a type himself. So, for all their honors and dramatic three- quarter and full-column entries in Who’s Who, were the Fellows. And momentarily flashed on Van Gogh’s vacant, heartbreaking room at Arles.
They had finished lunch and were parsing the bill. Miller owed the most, and, after he paid, saw that he was down to his last twenty dollars in francs. He had forty dollars more in traveler’s checks. Even if he watched his money carefully he realized he probably wouldn’t have enough left over to rent headphones to watch the movie on the flight back.
And now they discussed the groups into which they would break up so as to make the most of their time. Heidi, Robert, and the Bassets would do the rounds of shops, booths, and hotels to see what they could find for the costumes. Jesus Hans invited Rita to a hotel he knew of that gave, he said, a splendid late-afternoon tea dance, but Heidi wanted her with her on the shopping expedition. Jesus shrugged and said no problem-o, he’d go by himself. Despite Samuels Kleist’s surprising confessions to them on the bus, he told the group—how this worked wasn’t clear to Miller—it would be both a betrayal of his wife and his mistresses should he permit them to be in on the actual purchase of the mistresses’ gifts. Sir Ehrnst Riglin had made arrangements to meet with three members of the Swedish Royal Family who happened to be in town that week. Russell and Hartshine decided to take in the flick that was touted to win the palme d’or at the festival that year. Russell invited Miller to come with, but Miller, doling francs, said it was too nice a day to spend inside a theater and told them to go on, he thought he’d just take in the sights. Everyone agreed to meet back at the hotel by seven. That gave them just over four hours.
Miller watched as Rita and the nine Fellows struck out in their various directions, watched until they disappeared, and then, wordlessly started to walk alongside the brother- in-law.
They strolled for a bit on the wide white sidewalk that ran parallel to the beach. Everywhere around them, on towels and blankets, on flimsy canvas beach chairs or sitting in the sand, men and women gave themselves up to the sun, offering, venturing, compromising, accommodating, and finally surrendering almost their entire bodies to the forces of this charged place, only, it seemed to Miller, reserving to themselves a sort of ultimate modesty of wall-like indifference, somehow bolder—certainly more heartless—than Miller’s or the brother-in-law’s prurient but furtive sightseeing. It was like a contest of wills for which neither Miller nor the brother-in-law either (no matter he’d so ostentatiously draped his arm about his sister-in-law’s shoulders) had much stomach. They were humiliated by the seminude bodies of the women and embarrassed by the lewd assertion of the men’s genitalia inside their bikinis, and Miller was not surprised when his companion abruptly broke off and crossed the boulevard at an oblique angle to the gawking, slow-moving traffic.
Miller continued beside the man as he moved at a brisk pace through important districts of the city.
They came to the port and stared at the great yachts, little smaller than small cruise ships some of them. The brother- in-law pointed to individual yachts and called the names of their globally rich owners, powerful fortune celebrities. Sometimes he would repeat the name. Miller nodded appreciatively with a look of great understanding, as though Rita’s kinsman had delivered himself of some sober, clever gloss. He seemed to wait until he was certain Miller had taken it all in and then coughed his readiness to resume their tour. Miller smiled agreeably and they renewed their inspection of the city.
They made their way to the flower market, which now, in the late afternoon, was apparently experiencing a second wind as proprietors of the various stalls—each putting forward a featured variety—began to grant heavy discounts on great bunches of flowers.
The brother-in-law pushed roses on Miller, tulips and mums and daisies and carnations. He handed him dahlias and sprays of orchids.
“No no,” Miller said, returning them, doling francs but protesting, “what would I do with them? I go back in three days.”
His guide told Miller but my God, man, flowers of without the sun march in only fourteen years, this is certainly truly isn’t it? and pressed another bouquet on him. Miller handed the new bouquet back to the brother-in-law, who then gave him another new bouquet which Miller again returned. They looked like jugglers.
The fellow shrugged and (Miller had lost track by now of where they were in relation to their starting point) they continued walking.
This is the arrondissement of tomatoes and apples, said Rita’s relative.
They seemed to be in the heart of the produce district. As in the flower market, business had pretty much wound down for the day. The few people still picking over the somewhat faded fruits and declining vegetables were older, less chic than anyone Miller had yet seen in Cannes, and seemed to deal with the merchants from a position of strength, beggars who could afford to be choosers, hard bargainers who openly scoffed at the men who, even as their trucks backed up to haul off the unsold produce, countered all offers with proposals of their own, as indiscriminately, almost high-handedly, they continued to sweep their unsold merchandise into crates and cardboard boxes probably intended to hold distinct varieties (let alone classes) of produce. It was apples and oranges, thought Miller. Potatoes and cauliflowers. And smelled this faint mash of garden liquor, fermented earth chowder.
Just as one of the merchants was about to load a last carton of mixed fruits and vegetables onto the tailgate of his truck the brother-in-law spoke up.
Make halt! he declared. Please! he implored. If the mister demanded to steal the fruits of without the sun march, he thought he, but a poor miserable, could give for the most grand strawberries and others, say, many many thousands of francs.
It’s good, the merchant agreed, and gave over the carton to Rita’s bus-driving relation. Who, in turn, handed the fellow maybe four dollars American.
For the soups of my spouse, the brother-in-law said, and they were out of there.
They saw the district where chefs came for their meats in the early morning before the sun had risen, and a place near the docks where fishermen brought their catch to market. They even went into a church, not an old church but a large modern one, built after the war, no earlier than the late sixties probably, but by this time the bus driver was beginning to tire from carrying the not inconsiderable carton of day- old fruits and vegetables and he suggested that they arrest for a whiskey.
They stepped into a hotel.
The
y were looking for the bar when they heard music, a romantic, companionable melody of the easy-listening variety, and they made for its source.
They found a table in the almost empty bar and sat down. On a narrow stage in back an orchestra was playing and, beneath it, three couples moved across a polished, circular dance floor, which might comfortably have accommodated perhaps five or six times that number. Somehow, there being so few dancers gave the place an air (like so much of Cannes: the flower stalls and produce kiosks where commerce was winding down for the day, the moored, empty fishing boats by the docks and shutdown meat and fish markets, even the big and graceless church) of having been used up, some vaguely off-season sense of things, the dancing couples clutching each other out there on the floor not so much licentious—beyond licentious—as anachronistic, caught between day and night, in desperate, now-or-never, off-joint time.
Miller thinking as he drank his drink: How mysterious, something mysterious here.
Which is just when the brother-in-law nudged him, laying into him conspiratorially, even intimately (which Miller was certain he wouldn’t have tried with any of the other Fellows) with his elbow.
Attention beyond, he said. Attention beyond, attention beyond.
Miller looked at the bus driver, noticing for the first time that Rita’s relation bore, though he was at least thirty years younger, a striking resemblance to Van Gogh’s portrait of the peasant Patience Escalier. Both looked more Mexican than French.
“Non non, Monsieur,” he hissed, “la-bas, la-bas,” pointed toward the dance floor.
Miller looked where he pointed.
Jesus Hans, wearing her Borsalino, was dancing with Inga Basset, his hands loosely cupping the psychiatrist’s rear end as though he held it in a kind of sling.
Inga’s thigh was planted in Jesus’s crotch and he rocked in place, slowly rising against it to the beat of the easy listening.
The scene was stunning to Miller, incredible, immense. Even the logistics were stunning. How had Hans gotten her away from Basset? How, if the idea to hook up with Jesus had been Inga’s, had she known where the tea dance would be?
The band finished its set. There wasn’t time to ponder the big questions. Neither Miller nor the driver wished to be discovered in their discovery and, without a sign passing between them, both rose at once to quit the bar and get the hell out of the hotel. Miller even picked up the brother-in- law’s carton for him, handing it over only after the man had found his bearings and Miller knew that they were well on their way back to the rendezvous at the hotel where Rita’s brother-in-law had given the keys to the bus (Rita’s bus! Miller suddenly realized) to the doorman.
They were about forty minutes early.
Miller spotted Russell and Hartshine at a table in the outdoor café. Indicating he was going over to meet them he gestured that the driver was welcome to join him, but the fellow declined, pointing from his watch to the carton.
The fruit is getting late, he explained to Miller. The apples of the ground were falling fast and it was necessary for some of the vegetables to make the bus.
Miller nodded and crossed the boulevard.
“How was your show?” he asked Hartshine and Russell. “What about it, boys? Was it worthwhile?” What he wanted most was to tell his colleagues what he and Rita’s brother- in-law had seen in the hotel.
Hartshine, without even looking at him, touched the points of his shirt collar. He appeared to straighten his bow tie.
Miller repeated what he’d said when he’d told Russell it was too nice to spend the day cooped up in a movie. He said that he and the driver had decided to go on this walking tour of Cannes.
“That guy,” Miller said. “He knows this town like the back of his hand that guy.” He told them about the stalls in the flower and produce markets. He told them about the yachts and the district where the chefs came to inspect the fish and meats they would be preparing for their restaurants. What he was dying to tell them was about Jesus Hans and Inga Basset. He wanted to tell them about the thigh Inga had thrust between Jesus Hans’s legs and the way Jesus held Inga’s ass as he dry-humped her to the accompaniment of some soft show tune. What stopped him, he realized, was that he’d be going back to Indiana soon and he understood how very complicated it was to speak one’s mind or make overtures into mysteries at the last minute.
Russell wanted to know if he could buy Miller a farewell drink.
“What? No. Of course not,” Miller objected, openly resentful but helpless, and realizing even as he spoke to them how his protests must have sounded, how transparent his franc doling must seem to them.
“Gosh,” Russell said, “they’ve brought the bus round. I think I’ll go to the gents before we have to board. You, Hartshine? No, you went just before Miller showed up, didn’t you? Miller? No? Be right with you then.”
When Russell left, Miller sat awkwardly before Hartshine. He had no idea what to say to him. However difficult it was to keep from spilling the magic beans he’d picked up that afternoon at the tea dance (and which would have served to patch over not only the terrible silence between them but their awful breach as well), he was determined to say nothing about it. It wasn’t his honor that was at stake. Miller didn’t care a damn for his honor. It wasn’t even that his silence now could do anything to abate the devastating disclosures—and the cloud he’d since lived under—he’d made in the music room. Nor had Miller any illusions he was protecting anyone. This particular cat would be out of the bag before the evening was out. The brother-in-law would see to that. He’d tell Rita what they’d seen as soon as it was convenient.
No, what Miller did now (or did not do) he did for Van Gogh, for Van Gogh and the privilege of Arles. He did it, he meant (or did not do it), because he could not do it justice, because in his mouth the immense, incredible, stunning thing he’d seen would have been reduced to mere gossip.
He stared at Hartshine.
“You think Bologna really pays him two hundred grand?” he said at last.
“Why do you ask me this?” Harshine said. “You think because I’m Jewish I have an interest in such questions? I’m a scholar!”
“Go fuck yourself, Hartshine,” Miller said. “Go fuck yourself and kiss my Hoosier ass,” he said.
He got up from the table and went to board the bus. He passed the brother-in-law without a glance, picked up the carton of fruits and vegetables the man had set down on an aisle seat, moved it to the window seat, and sat in the aisle seat himself. With his eyes almost shut and pretending to sleep, with his eyes almost shut so all he could see shoot past his window were objects drained of definition and color in an illusion of speed, he managed to ride all the way back to Arles without saying a word to anyone.
Late on the night before Miller left Arles, someone rapped on his door. He straightened up and looked from where he was stooped over his things, packing the last of them into the suitcase open on the bed in Van Gogh’s room at Arles. He thought twice before answering the uncivilized knock, a sound so persistent it didn’t seem to have had any beginning. He looked toward the noise and wondered who could be making it. Russell had already left town and was almost certainly in Bologna by now. He didn’t think it could be Hartshine, seeking some rough reconciliation.
“Yes?” he said finally. “Yes?”
“Ah,” said Félix Rey on the other side of the door, “the good professor is in. We have not lost him.”
“I’m packing,” Miller said. “My train leaves first thing in the morning. It’s very late, I haven’t finished packing.”
“We will help you, Professor Monsieur. With three of us it will go by in a dream.”
“It’s awfully late,” Miller said. “I’m dog-tired.”
He hadn’t actually identified himself yet, Miller was thinking. If I can just hang tough until the man goes away and pretend not to know who it is, Miller was thinking, it can’t, on some technical level at least, be considered rudeness.
But at that point the physic
ian not only resumed his knocking, he also formally announced himself.
“It’s your médecin, Monsieur Professor American. It’s Dr. Félix Rey and a friend.”
“All right,” Miller said at last, giving in. He opened the door.
“What?” Miller said. “What?”
The physician was drunk, his prominent ears, redder even than he remembered, were flush, filled with blood. His clothes were disheveled, and even his brushcut hair and handlebar mustache seemed mussed, his plucked eyebrows. His full, fat Kewpie doll lips were slack. He was giggling.
Coming into the room Félix Rey extended his hand in greeting, but when Miller put out his own to shake it the doctor brushed it away and took Miller’s wrist as if feeling for a pulse. He mimed shining an imaginary penlight into Miller’s eyes and ears. He leaned into Miller’s chest and, cupping his ear, pretended to listen to his heart. Miller, who had the private drinker’s disdain for acts of public drunkenness, twisted away from him, causing Rey to stumble. It wasn’t until she laughed that Miller was aware that there was a woman in the room.
“May I,” said the doctor, “have the honor to represent to the American Mister Monsieur my very good friend, L’Arlésienne—— the incomparable and very beautiful Madame
Ginoux.”
She was the woman in the black-and-white photograph on the postcard Félix Rey had given him (the one who so resembled Kaska Celli), the woman whose image he had once called upon in one of his masturbatory flights. Almost as if she might have been conscious of this, Miller looked down.
“I am so very happy, sir,” Madame Ginoux said. “The doctor has spoke.”
“It’s good to meet you,” Miller said.
Then the woman did an odd thing. Bending her left arm at the elbow she lightly pressed the knuckles of her pale hand alongside her face in a sort of pensive salute. Miller identified the gesture at once. It was exactly as Van Gogh has posed her antecedent in his portrait more than a hundred years earlier. Madame Ginoux had the same long, wide nose as the woman in the portrait, the same blue eyes and black, black hair (so black, thought Miller, she had to have worked thick dark dyes into it) as Vincent’s model, and had gone so far as to affect her nineteenth-century costume right down to an almost identical white tulle jabot that she’d attached down the front of her full Prussian-blue dress. She had painted in almost punk-red eyelids and etched sharply defined lips above her wide, flat mouth.
Van Gogh's Room at Arles Page 32
