Man Who Was Late

by Louis Begley

  Paid another visit (wonderfully appropriate expression in this case) to Dr. Durer this morning, he of the missing umlaut. Six times in the last three weeks. No change in him since our encounters at the end of Rachel’s Era. Change is for patients; he has attained nirvana. Same little brown-haired man in a little brown jacket and black shoes that have never touched a sidewalk. Not a grain of dust. Puts them on when he gets to the office; real shoes must be in the closet. Why not do as the Japanese do? Leave shoes at door; shuffle off to pee in caramel-colored plastic slippers. Would make it possible to remove the transparent plastic from his awful couch, where my street-soiled footgear comes to rest.

  I know nothing about him, not even in which part of Mitteleuropa he acquired that accent, manly/tender, like my father’s. There must be a Frau Dr. D; surely she likes crystal boxes and Rosenthal figurines. On Saturday she takes him shopping for a new fur coat, keeps him in this impeccable condition. Lucky man. Had I only stuck to my own kind, might have been like that myself. Don’t like my own kind, that’s one problem; don’t know what my kind is, that’s another.

  Dr. D listens to my new predicament. Such states of feeling can be treated over a sufficient period of time, he opines gently. You have not taken time to be treated. It may be that you feel safer remaining as you are.

  No tone of reproach there. If he were not out of my field of vision in his bentwood rocker, making it go creak-creak, I would probably see a kindly little smile float around the corners of his mouth. So equable; so sure of himself. Like one of those great golfers hitting the ball very far, shown in slow motion.

  He continues: I can’t advise you how to respond to the French lady. You know that. (Or words to similar effect.) In any case, the outcome is unlikely to be what you anticipate.

  He offers Miltown. I accept the prescription and have it filled. Joseph’s race: be ready for the lean years.

  So much for prophylaxis. Once more, Dr. D and I are in substantial agreement.

  IX

  Il n’aurait fallu

  Qu’un moment de plus

  Pour que la mort vienne

  Mais une main nue

  Alors est venue

  Qui a pris la mienne.

  The singer crooned, reaching the intractable mass of Ben’s resentments and longings in their sullen hiding place; his voice—old-fashioned, bewitching—gave them attractive expression, one that Ben thought was, by the sleight of metaphor, weirdly accurate. Alas, he had never managed to do so well himself during those exhausting moments of sincerity when he strove to explain to Rachel, in the old days, and then to me or Dr. Durer his sense of loss and dislocation. Implacably intrusive, the voice continued:

  Moi qui frémissais toujours

  De je ne sais quelle colère

  Deux bras ont suffit

  Pour faire à ma vie

  Un grand collier d’air …

  Yes, that was the desperate and, in his own case, apparently vain longing for the other, into whom one could melt, the other who was the healer.

  The scratchy portable “pickup” in Guy Renard’s living room was working its way through a record of Léo Ferré singing poems by Aragon. Ben had asked Guy to play it, perhaps because of that song. They were drinking too much scotch. The day had seemed endlessly bright; if the sun ever set, if dusk came, they would go to the Bois for dinner. Navy-blue shade of the huge trees, lamps like fireflies on the gleaming white of round tables, a pink sky smudged with smoke: it was worth waiting for. The record had been a favorite of Guy’s and of his band of friends’ the summer that Ben first met them in Porquerolles. The funny record player, really like a red, imitation-leather valise, was their inseparable companion. Shocking Ben by their indifference to silence, they took it to coves that could not be reached by land, where one swam off the anchored pointu; at his house, when they came in the evening, they would set it on the balustrade that separated the terrace from the rocks and the sea. They sang along with the record—such strong, melodious voices they had, and perfect memory for the words. Slowly, two of the girls would dance together. No light was allowed in the windows of the pink villa—they were serious about stargazing. In a circle around the table cigarettes burned like eyes of cats.

  Ben had arrived in Paris that very morning. Right away, he called Véronique. She was in Paris; she had not left for the country; the maid, whose voice he did not recognize, was willing to find out whether she was at home. A long wait, then Véronique came to the telephone. They spoke quickly, out of breath. No, she could not see him today, not at any time. And tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow, she would have lunch with him; yes, at his hotel if he wished it.

  Against all probability then, he was to see her, and it was to be on his terms! There had been no recriminations; he had not had to plead his case. His heart beat very hard, and he sat for a while on the bed, near the night table where he had hung up the receiver, with his eyes closed, pressing his hand to his chest as though to calm the organ within it. Afterward, having changed rooms and unpacked—he now dared to acknowledge to himself that this suite with a pretty but totally unostentatious living room, on the courtyard side, away from street noise, would serve him better than the standard room, filled by its twin beds, into which one entered directly from the corridor the hotel had first offered—he got hold of Guy. Another miracle, albeit minor: Guy was free that evening and did not object when Ben declined his offer to find a girl who might join them at dinner to make the table more festive.

  So, exalted, just a tiny bit light-headed from whiskey and fatigue, Ben waited for the sky to change to the appropriate color and for the question that would eventually be put, while Guy discoursed, in beautifully orotund sentences, on the patterns into which relationships among their mutual friends (and indeed friends of Guy’s whom Ben knew only by name) were currently organized, and thought how much like the Hayden Planetarium this was—a well-trained voice, a velvet sky, the Constellation of the Fox displayed upon it.

  And how go the affairs of our little Madame Decaze? Guy asked. Odile tells me you have returned her to the owner.

  An unkind interpretation, Ben replied. Her affairs, so far as I am concerned, are in suspense, by her own design.

  It would have been better for her if she herself had managed to convey that impression. For reasons one cannot understand, she has chosen the role of the victim. Is it a specially refined taste for public humiliation or natural naïveté? Impossible to say—perhaps it’s her American education. On the other hand, most members of the Decaze family are naturally malevolent. They must like having her in the role of the mistress you rejected; it puts her under their thumb.

  I am seeing her tomorrow, said Ben. Tomorrow, we may change roles.

  Notes on the back of the menu for lunch on July 7, 1971, from the grill of the Crillon in Paris:

  Waiting for Véronique. Came down here early on purpose; make sure of decent corner table. By my count only four of these deserve the name. Better to look at her from the side, especially her ears. Then take her hand; knees might touch, tentatively.

  Portrayed on these avocado walls by some Hungarian’s hand are horses and jockeys at Longchamp. The race is about to start. What will be the purse for the winner at my table? Her heart? My life?

  Guy was tactless by design. He cares for me and so does Jack, only Guy understands better the necessary rules of mating. I knew what he would say, could have given the easy advice myself: stay away from trouble, never try to fix a botched suit (pax, Monsieur Jeanne), misery loves company and it’s company you do not need. But what if he and I—and Dr. D—are wrong, and V and I miss the one and only wave that can carry us to shore? Will I say then: Par prudence (by Jove, no pun intended) j’ai perdu ma vie?

  Hush, Ben. Here she comes.

  She wore a summer dress that was new to him: a stiff, navy-blue cotton affair, with a white pinstripe and a shirt collar. Like a shirt, unbelted, it buttoned down the middle. Instinctively, he disliked it: it was not the sort of thing one would have expected
a woman like Véronique to choose for a lunch such as this. Did she think she was stopping at the Crillon for a quick bite with him between a morning of shopping and an afternoon appointment at the dentist? It had to be the dentist, not the hairdresser, her hair was cut very short—freshly mowed, he would have been tempted to blurt out—and clung to the skull like a gold-and-silver casque. This too irritated him, as though he should have been consulted before this step had been taken, or at least given warning of its consequences. And she carried some sort of awkward parcel, from Aux Trois Quartiers, and now was resolutely resisting the headwaiter’s efforts to remove it from her grasp. There was no need for more proof! Since she was to be in the place de la Concorde at one, she had decided to run a convenient errand beforehand. Monstrously, slowly, the thought began to form in his head that he might have misread the script from the start—it could be that this had always been a one-man passion play, with no female lead role in it at all—or more likely, that feelings and events having organized themselves for Véronique on an accelerated schedule far in advance of his own, the script he thought he knew had been definitively discarded and replaced.

  Ben, what are you doing in this hotel? Has Olivia thrown you out? Has the Ritz closed its doors? She held out her hand.

  Olivia continues to think I am a perfect tenant, and to reinforce that opinion I have given her back her house until the end of the month. She wants to enjoy the Paris season. The reason I am in this place is that my senior partner, his wife, and countless children and cousins are at the Ritz to cleanse their shirts and bodies after pony trekking in Iceland. Dwight told me that if I happened to be in town at the same time as they, he would like us to have a meal or two together. I decided I would stay out of sight. So here I am, with half of the American press and all the State Department types for whom there was no room at the embassy. The peace talks must be at a delicate point or else, like Olivia, they all wanted to enjoy the Paris season.

  She said, Ben you are unchanged. You talk to prevent silence and you listen to yourself. What happened to us hasn’t marked you.

  Just what has happened, he asked, will you please explain it to me? If you liked me as I was, why aren’t you glad I am still the same? That’s what I came to Paris to find out. Of course, Pve noticed changes in you: you don’t answer my letters and you have cut your hair like a boy’s. Are the two related?

  Ben, stop playing with words. It’s childish and unfair and I am famished. Please order lunch.

  He consulted the menu and the waiter. She did not speak except to tell him she did not want wine. That’s another change and also a bad sign, he observed. Are there many more I should expect?

  She said, When you were in Brazil, you abandoned me. I had written to tell you what I had done. You knew I had done it so there would be no way out: we would have to be together. And still you turned me down.

  A tear began a long descent down the side of her nose, followed by another. Then she was crying very hard. Ben disliked public display of emotion. He watched in silence. She stopped eating, sniffed into a handkerchief, dried her eyes and cheeks, and said, I am not sure what difference it can make, but I have come to receive your explanation.

  He undertook to give it. His mouth was dry, although he drank glass after glass of water and then of wine. Against the pleasant obligato of the busy dining room, he heard his own voice rise and fall interminably—mechanical, off-key, absurdly distinct, and unlistened to—as though he had been moved mistakenly to make an unwelcome, ambiguous, and overly long toast at a banquet where his presence was in itself a mistake. His French was out of control; for the first time since they met, he began to address her in English, to exclude any error in nuance or connotation.

  He knew he was telling her things she had listened to many times before, he said: his failure with Rachel and the twins; how the loneliness that always dogged him turned into shame in the sexual act, because sterility rendered the act futile and as sinful as Onan’s; that she had brought to him a vision of such new possibilities of sunny happiness that he felt he must hold his breath and remain very still lest the vision fade. These were the reasons, he told her, for the vacillation, the constant hanging back—mistrust, sometimes loathing of himself, never lack of love.

  Poor Ben, she said and put her hand over his. Now you have explained the first letter. But what about the second? How could you have written that one—so callous, so wounding? Why did you not come back to Paris? Tell me what happened between the two letters.

  The waiter brought his grilled sole. He watched him bone and reconstitute it with quick movements, arrange it on the plate together with the perfectly formed steamed potatoes, before the fish could cool. No, he didn’t want the beurre blanc, not even on the side. He tried a small piece of the fish; it was perfect, it had always been perfect, one could suppose it would be perfect each time in the future. The conjugation was endless. Véronique was eating steadily, her eyes fixed on her plate. She must have told the truth when she said she was starved.

  First I went, quite unintentionally, to a sort of orgy, he said, and then, quite intentionally, I took a short, idyllic vacation with the nicest of the girls I met at the orgy. When I returned to Rio de Janeiro, I wrote that second letter. I did not think I could return to you straightaway.

  I want a description.

  As he complied, he noticed that his voice had returned to normal and that he was telling the story well, as he might have told it to me. A large erection was tugging at his trousers. Véronique had stopped eating. She did not resist when he took her hand.

  You enjoyed being with a whore, she said. That is what you really wanted. You should have come to me immediately. I am better than your Lotte. I do everything. I have always wondered about the things you did not ask me to do, why you never beat me. You know one can. Can we go to your room now? Isn’t that why you had me come here?

  When she took off that offending dress—unbuttoning it, her fingers were ahead of his—he saw that she had nothing underneath, not even stockings. She stood before him waiting, eyes downcast, her feet red instead of pink where her shoes had pressed against them, stomach delicately veined and oddly round, like Dürer’s Eve. He put his hand on her belly button and caressed it.

  You can feel its head, she said, guiding him. It has even begun to kick. And then, pushing his hand away, do it to me hard, as hard as you can, from the back, right here, in your clothes. I am all hot. You have kept me waiting.

  Except for the hoarse cooing of the pigeons on the wire mesh that was stretched over the courtyard to keep them off windowsills, no sound reached the bedroom. She had torn the stately covers from the bed. They were on the floor now, a wrinkled, ancient mountain. The wall on the other side of the courtyard glowed yellow in the late afternoon sunlight. Where they were, in the shade, the light was still very bright but cold. Véronique had pulled up the blanket over them. Head in the hollow of Ben’s shoulder, she was asleep. She, too, had told her story.

  By some quirk both of Ben’s letters had reached her in Verbier on the same day, and after she had read them she decided to return at once to Paris, alone. She had no clear idea of what she would accomplish in Paris. Try to reach Ben through his secretary? Take a plane to Brazil in the hope of finding him? Wait for a telephone call or the next letter, telling her that he had been drunk, that she was not to worry? Perhaps there was nothing to be done at all, but she thought she could not continue to tremble so and stay in Laurent’s and Paul’s presence and be on show in the chalet at evening meals. She told Paul she was bleeding at the wrong time and was scared. Fear of unknown gynecologists was something even he could sympathize with, and the panic she felt about Ben made it easier to convince him of her distress. The snow was excellent. He agreed to stay with Laurent and the babysitter until the Monday after New Year’s Day, just as had been planned.

  The planes from Geneva were full; she waited in the airport for a cancellation and finally got a seat on the last evening plane, in the last row of the
tourist cabin. She was exhausted and fell asleep immediately at takeoff, only to be wakened a few minutes later when dinner service began. Next to her, on the aisle side, sat a man not fat but of enormous size: his arms, his thighs, overflowed in her direction. She refused the meal and asked instead for a blanket and began to doze again. When slowly and reluctantly she awakened she felt a warm thing, huge and insistent prying her legs open, stroking her, making her horribly wet, then going inside, exploring, withdrawing, returning, pinning her down with irresistible weight. She opened her eyes, the man winked and then smiled pleasantly, and with his left hand lifted his glass to her. His right arm, she saw it, in shirtsleeve, was buried up to the elbow under her blanket, moving slightly, while what she understood were his fingers had enlarged their activity, another one now penetrating her at a lower place with slow pressure until the wall between these intruders seemed to have been grasped by a cautious, relentless clothespin. His elbow pressed against her belly, below her ribs, knocking out her wind. There was no resisting it. She came in bursts so violent she bit her arm not to cry out. At once, the hand responded. Quiet now and fraternal, it retreated gently to her furry part, which it scratched, patted, and comforted, like the head of a cat.

  For the first time, he spoke. It was to say he had only begun. He called her ma cocotte. While his tray table was cleared and folded, the attendant bending over him, the fingers descended again imperturbably, as though familiar with the terrain, more rapid, their demands capricious and larger, growing, she thought, as he drank his brandy and she writhed.

  They spent the night in the hotel at Orly. He was Swiss traveling to Stockholm; the connection was early; he had no need for sleep. From his suitcase, an aluminum box really, he took a camera and a folded tripod. There was an envelope of color photographs. He showed them to her, one by one. On certain of them, he identified the woman. A large number were of his wife. When he paused, it was to enter her and ejaculate almost immediately. Toward dawn, when she was so sore her juices ran pink, he took pictures of her alone and also with him, before the tripod. Later he showed her how to work the camera and shoot him with the focus on his face. It grinned above the member he held in two fists, like an eyeless trout.