Man Who Was Late

by Louis Begley

  AS BEN’S EXECUTOR and devisee of all his papers (as well as of his collection of neckties, cuff links, and shirt studs), I retrieved, with the help of Ben’s distraught secretaries, file folders of papers from his offices in New York and Paris and, from warehouses, serially numbered, sealed cartons. Each bore a label with the words “Pandora’s Box” written on it in Ben’s hand. There were also documents and tapes of his dictation in the hotel in Geneva.

  Thus I came into possession of Ben’s pocket notebooks and diaries with notations (often illegible) of the events of the day that lay outside his business life—what he had eaten at each meal and in whose company—dates on which the reading of a book was commenced or finished, streets down which he had walked in foreign cities, as well as numbers, algebraic symbols, and little drawings to which I never found a key. On certain blank pages of these diaries—but also on sheets of paper clipped together or rolled and held by rubber bands—were lists of women’s names: sometimes the full name was given and sometimes only the first name and an initial in lieu of the surname. Occasionally, one or two letters appeared on a line, without a name. Were these initials? Some names were followed by dates. Having known Ben and at least the New York world he had moved in so very well, I realized that these were records of his more ephemeral “possessions,” and gradually I came to deduce that they had been made in airport departure lounges, on trains, or while Ben pretended to listen to financial presentations. He wrote them to test his memory or to break in a new fountain pen or perhaps for insertion in the curriculum vitae he would present to the arbiter of some ultimate place of repose—much as another man might have cataloged articles he had published in learned journals. The lacunae in certain of the lists and the inconsistencies, which at first I found surprising, I came to relate, in moments of frustration, to what in the past I had sometimes assumed to be Ben’s mythmaking. At other times, I adhered to another, more benign explanation: Could it not be that Ben was capable of forgetting, that his memories became confused, and that, at least once in a while, his attention flagged?

  Much later, when I was brought to reflect bitterly on what must have been a signal Ben had tried to give—speaking to me so insistently and mysteriously of a novel by Pierre Jean Jouve—a signal that I had not understood but that could have been a plea for help, I read, as though in contrition, much of that writer’s work and came upon the following passage, which I have translated:

  A notebook is found, containing all these names of women, with and without addresses, a chaos of names: sluts, you say, and “useful addresses.” But that entire notebook, if only because it is so jam-packed, cannot correspond to experience. A man responsible for a great task could not have entered so many women. That entire notebook contains figures which correspond to one Figure only, before which the Poet is a Supplicant. It is a vow of union to the woman who belongs to all, and to all women, and thereby the notebook dissolves into a prayer. All these names adored under the vestment of nudity intercede for the poet.

  I have wondered whether there too was a sign Ben had intended me to decipher.

  But the most precious content of the lode of trivia, mischief, and lyric self-expression Ben bequeathed to me were notes, many typed (when Ben was traveling with his portable Olivetti), others written in his large slanting hand, rarely dated, a large majority filed in apparent chronological order under the name “Notaben”—the sort of pun of which Ben was monotonously fond—and a few letters addressed to him. Ben did not make copies of letters he had written, but there were in Pandora’s Boxes some drafts of letters he had written in French. Apparently, he was not sure of getting them right on the first try.

  Some of these materials are reproduced in the narrative that follows. I changed certain names and details that might reveal the identity of my cousin, the woman I call Véronique.

  II

  TOWARD THE END of August 1969, Ben moved to Paris, taking charge of his bank’s long-established office in the place Vendôme. At the time, for a young partner, this was the equivalent of canonization. For someone of his tastes, it could also be seen as the entry into the Garden of Earthly Delights: when Ben turned his back on the green and gold expanse of his Empire desk top, his eye would behold the verdigris of Napoleon’s column; he would lunch at the Ritz unless, to please a client sophisticated enough to know that Maxim’s must be shunned in the evening, he determined to stroll down the rue Saint-Honoré to the rue Royale and welcome his lunch guest in the sanctum of the omnibus. It was understood that the assignment was for the usual period of two or three years only, and that he would continue to follow matters of certain clients occasionally requiring his presence in New York. Ben decided to keep his apartment on Central Park West: it was where Sarah and Rebecca had last stayed with him. Now that they were in college they might be induced to return—especially if he wasn’t there! The day before he sailed we took our customary noontime meal. Although we were in Vermont as we were every August, I came down to the city for the occasion. He handed me a set of keys and said the maid had been told to expect my presence on weekdays: for work, he emphasized, not trysts, it being Ben’s theory that I used my cubicle at the magazine principally as a telephone booth and would never finish the book I was writing on Indian use of the land in Maine unless I was removed to the comfort and silence of his library. Another gesture of affection was to come: Ben remembered that my wife and I had not been to Europe since our honeymoon. Would we not leave the children in the care of the current señorita and visit him in Paris as soon as he had a place to live? He was going to look for one that would make good memories for him and for us. I accepted on the spot. Prudence would agree—of that I was sure. Like many of Ben’s friends’ wives, she had a soft spot for him.

  Here, I later learned, is how Ben found his Paris apartment.

  Excerpt from Notaben 73 (undated):

  What is a nightmare? A daydream come true. So holds an old Bessarabian proverb I will use as the epigraph of my treatise on apartment hunting, but only if it translates well into many languages. My work will be a worldwide success.

  The little marquis de rien du tout took me to see one at the very top of Montmartre. Climb lots of stairs, unacceptable mental image of me and my bags—assuming Figaro doesn’t rush down to get them. Effort rewarded by heart-stopping views: (1) All of Paris, stretching beyond the Invalides. In the slight mist, as I squint against the setting sun, it lies before me like a burnt offering. (2) The owner’s long legs, tanned and creamy, only a little soft in the thigh (she must be over 40). Am I reaching an age where a woman a couple of years older than I will begin to seem too old?

  I love the century I live in. She receives her prospective tenant in a miniskirt that stops at the crotch; she is a sun worshiper, she explains, as she leads us up a spiral-ladder contraption to the terrace on the rooftop (an even better view of the legs with a hint of the twin gates between). I forbear from confessing I am a blind leg worshiper—must touch, must feel, must enter the temple (on my knees if need be). She tells me she will principally worship in her native Venezuela for the 3 years to come, but has a little house in Bora Bora for intensive retreats. Perhaps I would care to come.… The word is like a bell; I switch to the language of Descartes to recover my composure. Mind made up this lodging will not do but commerce oblige. We admire the terrace, study the watering system for the hibiscus, descend the ladder (no view), penetrate the mistress bedroom done in gray leather, possibly to set off the collection of omnipresent native masks, hats, and clubs (just like dildos only bigger), two guest rooms (smaller dildos, perfect for Jack and dear Prudence), etc.

  At last I sense I have been polite long enough.

  If only you were not leaving, chère Madame, if I could be your grateful lodger, it would be a cinch: your humble servant would pant to pay FF 15,000/month plus charges, plus whatever it takes in cash under the table for Juanita/Susanna, merely for the privilege of being near you, huddling in the smallest room with the smallest dildos, pardon, clubs, but as
it is …

  And so I flee, and so let the marquis, his spirits dampened, tongue loose, drive me as far as the Opéra, where I catch a cab.

  All this is nonsense, the right stuff for lunch with Jack. Nothing to do with poor Ben, mad Ben, not the way he is now.

  We are not very well, is that not so? We do not like bumping against curbs when we drive our little auto, even without a drop having taken, do we? And what have you eaten, Lord Randall my son, to feel so ill and frightened while the little marquis heads for the Automobile Club, the two hours he wasted with you already receding in his mind? Darkness and loneliness, Mother. I fain would be happy but do not know how. Meanwhile, Montmartre and the 360° view are not for me. I will not drive my Peugeot up those winding streets. I will not buy boudins blancs at the corner charcuterie or consume them alone in that Latin whore’s nest or correct there the offering prospectus for Biscuits Cul after my solitary meal.

  Cab stuck on the way to the Left Bank. Monstrous traffic jam at the Carrousel. Hangover returns, with it poison gas and stomach cramps. Jack and Prudence are ante portes—just like Prudence to write they are coming before good old Ben has built his dream house.

  Mercifully, the rue du Cherche-Midi is one way the right way. Pull up at familiar building opposite rue Férou at six sharp. A few doors up the street, refurbished hotel, now full of black diplomats. No questions asked, sparkling clean chintz rooms, hard beds I’ve tried to death with Josiane, Christiane, Liliane (not picked for euphony, cross my heart!). Hotel’s proximity of dubious value if I take the place but, with my life’s twists and turns, who is to say?

  Manservant opens door. Previously concealed or new since last visit. Italian—very polite. Mme de la Chapelle, née Morgan, will see me; never know whether to kiss these Franco-American hands. In her case, to be consistent, I do. Usual synoptic review of: all her Morgan and Roosevelt connections putatively alive, whether or not known to me; Rachel and what are the names of those darling twin girls; my partners over sixty—here manservant pours a martini, may the Almighty pour blessings on him; the iniquity of French taxes in all their manifestations now that the regretted Léandre de la C. is no longer here to “cope.” She’s getting to the point; that is why she has decided to lease but not yet sell this 18th c. pavilion, entrance from the courtyard of a banal building, on the other side its own garden, with all her furniture (reasonably good), paintings (of the period and inoffensive), bed linen, table linen, and forks and knives, and there is nothing like these toothy Long Island transplants when it comes to fixing and fitting out a house. With Léandre’s sister, it would have been all show: Aubusson in the hall, l’entre-deux-guerres in the kitchen. With my lovely Olivia we have the Aubusson all right, but the kitchen is one where dear Ben will not mind tossing a salad, particularly if Gianni has laid it all out, as he always does, before taking his Thursday and Sunday evening. Gianni pours another martini: good man, already trying to ingratiate himself.

  Jack and Prudence are in luck. Now we are in the American mode; I shake Olivia’s hand on the deal. She had worried I would want to move her stuff out and move my own in. I make her happy—my clothes are all I am bringing. She thinks it charming I left my pad in NY intact. Of course, such a good building! She means that’s how people used to live.

  Lest she think some more and decide I am a spendthrift and so double the rent (thus far moderate), I say I will need my NY apartment for business trips; hotels now awfully expensive and unreliable. This she understands. What would she think if I said to her—so practical, so brave in her old age, willing to leave her home of 35 (or is it more?) years and move back to NY (to be sure, she too has kept her house there) just to save on taxes for her loutish lawyer son—that I couldn’t bear to close the only home I have? Acquired post-Rachel! Worse, that I can’t decide to transport my ten sticks of worldly goods to Paris, install those same ten sticks in some place I have first caused to be painted, decorated, etc.; that I have no idea why I do anything I actually manage to do, except, of course, my work.

  That must be the point of the epigraph. I have no place I need to be (except my office) and no person I need to be with (except the boys at the office).

  Admirable condition of freedom: one would suppose I might continue living at the Ritz—possibly talk the bank into paying for it—and wait to see what happens. Or, for instance, live up on Montmartre where “people” don’t live. I could meet some nonpeople, spend my next vacations at Club Med. Unfortunately, I can’t bear freedom. Antidote for freedom: multiply Ben’s obligations. Thus, I am still one foot in New York but already I have Jack and Prudence as houseguests in Paris at a house I haven’t yet looked for; thus, I must quickly find a “home” where they can be guests (a place that makes good memories, that being the idiotic phrase I had the bad taste to make); thus, with my equally renowned efficiency I find such a place and obtain possession thereof—including il bravo Gianni, very authentic and beautifully restored boiseries, and a parking space for my car in my very own courtyard. Car = freedom. Should I give up the parking space and the car, or console myself by the thought that I am subject to another servitude? The beastly thing will need to be serviced and either I will have to see to it or, better yet, con Gianni into taking it on!

  A dream come true, right?

  I am not convinced that this particular message from the other world is fully reliable. In life, Ben was not impenetrable; I presume to believe that the prospect of our visit was, in fact, welcome. This is one of the undated Notabens: When did he write it? Before our visit, as the text indicates, or later, as an exercise in style or to explain subsequent events or disappointments? The number he gave it is of little help in this respect: I have come to think that Ben numbered notes and letters at random or in accordance with a system known only to him. Most important to me, I cannot dismiss the possibility that, whenever the text was written, he was striking a pose, as he did in so many circumstances, not because he was a poseur but out of discouragement. Ben liked to joke that he was his own invention and therefore never could be certain how he really felt about anything or anybody. I wonder whether he did not sometimes try to solve the problem, and put an end to tormenting doubts, by also inventing various experimental versions of his feelings.

  PRUDENCE AND I arrived at Ben’s in the second half of October; we were to spend three weeks and still get back in plenty of time to make ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We both have large families, Prudence’s only slightly smaller than mine. She promised not to do all her shopping in Paris. Fortunately, Ben had warned us that the days when one could find charming little bargains for all the aunts and nieces were over. Bloomingdale’s had the same merchandise at half the price.

  We were as happy as clams in the house on the rue du Cherche-Midi. Although the weather was still mild, so that in late morning and early afternoon we could open the French windows leading from the drawing room to the little walled garden, the leaves of the acacia trees had turned yellow and red and dotted the ground cover of moss and creeping ivy; sometimes they stuck to the white, grinning face of the marble goddess (Ben claimed it was Pomona) he arranged to have installed in the center of the garden—to keep us company—the day after our arrival. He was right; this absence from the children, from the magazine, from my unwritten book, and Prudence’s dance class was a cure that had come just in time. Ben left for the office before we rose; a silent and grave Gianni ministered to our breakfast needs, made up our room, and whisked away my shirts while we drank coffee and read the Tribune, awaited instructions about lunch, lit fires at the first hint of a chill when the day waned. I think it amused Ben to learn that Olivia de la Chapelle and I were distantly related—through the Alsops—and that my grandmother and she had in fact been friends as girls; he enjoyed the savor of New York connections. In consequence, he had introduced me to Gianni as the countess’s nephew, a quality that may have accounted for Gianni’s benevolent patience about our mealtime habits. Prudence had discovered Fauchon: whatever might have bee
n agreed about lunch, she would arrive with her packages of pâtés, goat cheese, and marinated mushrooms that simply must be put on the table, fruit-flavored teas and tea cakes to be added to the afternoon repertory of refreshments, and new jams for breakfast. I managed to have lunch with Ben only once, in part to visit his office but principally to discuss the trip the three of us were planning to take, as a sort of extended weekend, to the châteaux of the Loire. He made it clear that in Paris lunch was even more a part of the working day than in New York; we would instead see each other in the evening, whenever possible.

  I knew some people in Paris, American journalists and writers, and would have liked to introduce Ben around—he did not appear to move in that circle. Interesting friends he used to see with Rachel had gone back to the States or lived in the French countryside, and I suppose he was reluctant to look up, on his own initiative, people who might be said to belong to her. I got the feeling that he spent his free time (of which there seemed to be little) among a collection of rather tattered French types, some with sonorous names, and all connected, when you came right down to it, with a man called Guy Renard, a fashion photographer very aware of his own charm, whom Ben had met in Porquerolles. Most of them, perhaps all, came to the house to drink champagne at the beginning of our first week. Since these people seemed impervious to Prudence’s and my French, and themselves ran out of English conversation at the end of two sentences, my conclusion that they were a bum lot did not rest on much; perhaps it was not really necessary to remove Ben from their influence. But that is what I nevertheless concluded. I was pursuing this goal when I hinted to him at lunch, after we settled our travel plans, that I might get together a group of writers for drinks at the rue du Cherche-Midi or, if he found it more convenient, at the bar of the Ritz. Ben said quickly that I should by all means give a party, that it must be at his place (Gianni would do it all or get help), and that he would probably join us—it all depended on the hour the guests came and left and where he stood with some negotiations that required evening telephone calls to New York.