A Fairly Good Time Page 13

  He was kind to poor Gertrude Schram, however, perhaps because she laid her tear-stained love story before him in a manner so blatant that benevolence was the only response. She would begin from the beginning and then rapidly turn in circles. First of all, no one must know: she implored his discretion. She would rather have been thought an old maid or a lesbian than have the truth get about. “The minute anyone sees you with a Negro all they think about is sex,” said Gertrude primly. Secondly, the man was married to an Armenian from Cairo—all she had wanted was the American passport, Gertrude said, and could she really be Armenian? Her name was Lorna—I ask you, now—

  “He is married,” said Philippe, even when it seemed best to say no more.

  “Yea, to this Lorna. She threw spaghetti all over me in a restaurant. She told Alroy she was brought up in an orphanage, that way she got his sympathy. I happen to know her father had chain stores before Nasser threw them out.”

  But there was more than any of this: Alroy had lived in Paris more than seven years, he could not speak a word of French, he had quarreled with everyone. This meant that if Gertrude married Alroy there would be no social equivalent for the life she was likely to lose.

  “You would not lose us,” said Philippe, giving an imagined Alroy a friendly glance. There were a thousand reasons why he would have preferred Alroy’s company, with or without French.

  “Well, he’s never mentioned marriage,” said Gertrude, coming around to something Philippe had been suggesting all along. “She’s one of those doormats. Puts up with anything.”

  “Don’t cry,” said Shirley as Philippe rang for a taxi. He would see Gertrude safely downstairs and give the driver her address, for she was sobbing too convulsively to speak. He was afraid the chauffeur would think he had enticed Gertrude into drunkenness so as to seduce her and that she was weeping now because he had not been much of a lover.

  The long decadence of Saturdays had touched bottom a week ago, when Renata called and Shirley said softly, with her hand cupping the telephone, “I can’t come over now. Philippe’s here; we’re just having lunch. I’ll see later. I’ll try. No, what I mean is, it’s a promise. I said, a promise.”

  “You know what I’m going to do, don’t you?” said Renata.

  “No, don’t. At least don’t say it. Though if you say it, it means you won’t do it.”

  “You’re all bastards, every one of you,” Renata said.

  Shirley hung up cursing the sun and good weather. This should have been the day of a general strike, pouring with rain, filled with foul-mouthed drivers and scratched cars. Once James had called on the morning of a general strike to say, “The electricity is off and I can’t see to shave up here. Could I shave in your bathroom? You have light from the window.”

  “No,” she had said proudly. “You can’t just wander in like that now. I’m married.” Though Philippe had certainly heard her end of this, he had never asked, “Who was it?” just as, weeks later, he had not commented on her conversation with Renata. He seldom asked questions because he hoped none would be asked of him. Their marriage was conducted in a truce of privacy (at least on his part) and a white silence.

  After lunch that Saturday she had expected Philippe to depart on some business of his own; he took her instead to the Select in Montparnasse, where he was to meet someone who had promised to fetch him a camera from Germany. They sat on the terrace of the café and Philippe, who had perhaps begun thinking back from Renata to an earlier nuisance, who was James, suddenly said, “What would your father have said about that Greek if he had known him?”

  “My father?”

  “Yes. You should think about it. It is important. I always wonder what my father would have said or done when I am not sure of myself.”

  “ ‘Bloody time-server’ I think he’d have said. James is kind and Canadians don’t like men to be too kind. They can just barely stand kindness in women, though it’s all right to be nice about animals. They don’t mind it if you say you appreciate trees and all that.”

  As usual she had lost his attention. Why my father? she wondered. Philippe didn’t know my father. He doesn’t know my father called me Belle. Doesn’t he know his father was a swindler, a crook, a con man? But Philippe is honest. Colette is too, for that matter. Colette will say sincerely to someone, “But I think of you every day!” before turning her back and never speaking to that person again.

  Philippe was smiling now and saying that it was a holiday weekend and would Shirley please look at the weather? He was free today, he would go anywhere she liked, do anything she wanted. He offered the names of restaurants and kissed her cheek.

  What shall I say? What shall I say to avoid saying “Renata?” Conversation: Acid, vegetarianism, the food at the Coupole, Victorian silver.

  She perceived at two or three tables pushed together young Germans who had been chosen to play SS men in another film about the war. “You’ll have to stand on your feet for a change,” a make-believe officer yelled at them. “We’ll show you how to stand, what it means to walk.”

  At that moment the man Philippe was waiting to see, Helmut, moved out of the group and came toward them. He said something to Shirley—something perfunctory, polite, hands on their table, bending down, the tweed sleeve grazed her shoulder—but his eyes flicked past her to Philippe, whom he admired. Philippe had helped him out once—had written about one more cry or injustice. He drew up a chair and sat between them, slightly turned to Philippe, which was useful; it excluded her and gave her time.

  “I told them,” said Helmut, “that for fifteen thousand francs a day I would wear a uniform. I look like something they want. It’s funny, isn’t it? They said you are not an actor, don’t try to be one, just repeat what you know. What I know? I was born in 1940 on Hitler’s birthday. The sign of the ram.” The two men spoke entirely to each other. Helmut was going to Germany for the first time in years. He wanted to see his mother, though they did not get along. A sad story was wound around this meeting. Helmut spoke as if Philippe knew all the details and as though Shirley simply were not there. What he described was violent and political and concerned with abstract justice, and she shut down her mind. Helmut was to bring back a camera for Philippe—that was what today’s meeting was about. She sipped her beer and tried to find the trick, the excuse, that would release her and send her across the city to Renata, who was alone, and who needed her, and who Philippe considered sly and unimportant and a waste of time. She watched a dark, doll-like man choosing extras and pretending, yes, pretending that it was the “selection” in a concentration camp; he knew and even Shirley knew, but these young Germans thought it was a game and they laughed at him. Once he said to someone, “God, you’ve got the face of an animal. You’re in—saved!” He meant a scarred man, older than the others, slightly overweight, like an athlete out of training. He laughed immoderately.

  The chosen one grinned. “Did you hear? I’ve got the face someone wants.”

  “He was in the Foreign Legion seven years,” said Helmut without turning. “The brain of an animal—an ox. The face is normal. A face . . .”

  “Would you bring me a flag from Germany?” Shirley suddenly said.

  When Helmut realized she was speaking to him, he asked politely, “What sort of a flag do you mean?”

  “Why, your flag, of course. The . . .”

  Philippe said quickly, “About the camera . . . do you want dollars? Because I can . . .”

  “It’s for this person I know, Karel Brock,” said Shirley. “He collects all that sort of thing.”

  Helmut stood up, said to Philippe, “I don’t need dollars,” bowed to Shirley briefly and departed. Philippe stared straight before him at the cars rushing to leave the city.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Why should I do Karel a favor, come to think of it? I was only trying to get into the conversation. I didn’t think he’d be so touchy about the flag. I was thinking about Renata and that made me think of Karel.”

  When
Philippe spoke to her next it was about something else entirely. They walked along the boulevard toward the rue de Rennes, where he said he had left the new Simca parked on the wrong side of the street. He would never quarrel: he would look for a way around quarreling. He had wanted a way of being that was unlike his mother’s and now (Shirley thought) he knew that Shirley’s way was based on nothing but daydreams and incompetence. But she was part of his life, he had accepted her, and he would not quarrel. He was endlessly patient; his discretion was limitless; and she was in the desert.

  He said, “Where shall we go? I know that you like the crowds on Saturdays.” He was teasing but his voice was kind. He was concealing something—his anger at her gaffe with Helmut. If only he would talk about it! He held her hand, which, in her guilt and distress, she had clenched to a fist. She knew, because Madame Roux had told her, that this habit of holding her hand in public was a compliment. None of Madame Roux’s French husbands would have considered doing such a thing.

  “I have to go to a party,” she muttered. “Renata absolutely needs me.” She added, “You could come too,” knowing he would not.

  “What?”

  She said it again, or something like it. He made her repeat it a third time. She looked up and saw behind his head the light summer sky. He did not make a point of releasing her, but presently they walked apart. He did not so much draw away as let her fall.

  “You hadn’t said anything about tonight until a few minutes ago,” she said. But she had lost everything, even his interest. He examined the parking ticket pinned under the windshield wiper, then unlocked the door on the driver’s side. He slid behind the wheel, reached across and opened the other door.

  “When we got married you said we’d be free, not like those other Noah’s Ark couples,” she cried, but if she was arguing in a motor car on a Saturday afternoon then they were like those other couples. “For example, if I weren’t your wife you wouldn’t leave me there on the sidewalk like a . . . a horse. You’d unlock my door first.” Who is speaking through me? she suddenly wondered. My mother? Never. Some yappy wife in a movie? The dead “Daisy” Geneviève so wisely killed off before her novel even opens? “I’m sorry,” she said. “Look, let me call Renata. Or, I’ll go for a minute and come right back.” No, it was no good: he had left her.

  Oh, how much easier it was to talk to one’s friends or to someone in transit.

  Every thought that crossed her mind now was proof of bad faith or hypocrisy or cowardice. Words became toads as they sprang from her lips. “You live by plans, you’re always making lists,” she said, trying to find the same affectionate, slightly teasing voice he had used earlier; but she was an amateur actress, her voice was not “placed,” what she had to say came out in a woman’s whine: “I didn’t know today was on a list.”

  “You are right, I did live to schedule,” he said, without looking at her. “But Renata was never on any list of mine, which means I can’t cross her off. And so you had better go to her if she can’t be happy without you.”

  “It is normal for women to have women friends,” she said. She had not meant this to be the last word, but he let it be.

  •

  Before dawn, uninvited, she rang James’s doorbell. She knew she was indiscreet and might not be welcome. She was dressed as she had been when she had left the store and boarded a bus to go and visit Philippe. James opened the door after he had combed his hair and placed a blue handkerchief just so in the pocket of his dressing gown. He was alert and ready for any dawn caller, whether it was a young girl hysterical with love, a slightly tight neighbor, or the vice squad. She half-expected him to send her away.

  “The thing about champagne is you can’t drink as much as you want to,” she said. “You start to gag on it. And Geneviève’s novel has vanished, all but a few pages. Maybe they won’t be missed.”

  He surprised her by taking it for granted she had come to borrow money again, but she wanted nothing but company. The apartment downstairs was condemned and she was afraid of seeing the first cracks appear in the walls. Nothing could save the house now except a blessing. Lovemaking was exorcism in its simplest form. She undressed casually, saying, “Where is Rose?” CORO DI NINFE was still scrawled with lipstick on the wall. His only failing, for her, was an edge of sentimentality that made her laugh. Her laughter worried him—he had forgotten what she was like. He did not know if he ought to be offended or not. She felt, briefly, as Philippe had said he did when Shirley read his mail; she told James that “love” was too private to be discussed in bed, and she offered a substitute word for it—say “mineral” or “Maurice.” “Love” (or “Maurice”) was easily damaged; it could not be helped. Other than “Maurice,” everything had to be in primary colors, clear, and on the verge of burlesque. “If I can’t laugh I don’t want it,” she said. He reminded her that two years ago she had said to him it had to be secret; it had to be violent; it had to be dark. She praised him for remembering. But he was accustomed to the tearful, tender, overwrought little German girls he picked up in the Latin Quarter who probably made the pretense at loving their only condition.

  He woke Shirley early in the morning. He was expecting Rose. He said, “It is a pity I let you marry Philippe. It is obvious that you get on much better with me.”

  “You had better marry a young girl before you get much older.”

  “A young girl would bore me. I would have so much trouble with her mother. You know—if you marry a young girl the mother is there too.” This was raving; a young girl was all he intended to marry. “Though one can be not young and still innocent. Take Renata—before Karel she had known only two men.”

  She sat up in bed with her elbows on her knees. “I won’t discuss Renata. But James, do let me tell you something for your own good. It’s something I’ve tried to explain to Philippe. It is about the only two men business. A woman will always say, ‘It was never like this with anyone.’ Oh, you needn’t smile. I’m sure you have heard it.” Without interrupting her, with gestures, he suggested that he wanted to make the bed. She got up, trailing a bedsheet. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings but please believe me—what she means is, ‘It is always like this.’ What it mostly comes down to is being polite, you know. She forgets from one time to the next and then she remembers and says, ‘It was never like this.’ She’ll say, ‘It can’t work for me unless I’m in love.’ She’s just forgotten. She’s forgotten about the total stranger she met on the beach at Dubrovnik and how they both lied about who they were and where they came from. She will say, ‘Only two other men before you.’ I suppose it is because ‘only one’ would make it sound as though nobody wanted her, and any more than two makes her sound like a whore. Also, more than two men makes it hard to bring in the bit about ‘It was never like this.’ You’d begin wondering what her problem had been, exactly. Centuries of female rubbish is her problem, James. The menstruation mystique, the ‘never like this’ mystique, the business of ‘only you’ and of course those inevitable other two. James, if all the men with whom it could work perfectly were collected in the Place de la Concorde there’d be the biggest traffic jam since the Liberation of Paris. And James, they know it—all these women know it. Stop listening to them! Stop believing ‘I can’t unless . . .’ and ‘It won’t work for me until . . .’ and ‘I have to be in love.’ No wonder Freud said women couldn’t be analyzed! Don’t encourage emotional lying in young girls! Don’t feed it with a phony climate! Let them be in love, but not with you and not for that reason.” Amazed at herself, she added, “And by God, every word of this is true.”

  James, after a moment or two of dismay, took cover behind his English face. “All this might apply to other men,” he seemed to be saying, “but never to me.” He disappeared without answering and presently she heard the shower running. By the bedside were two or three volumes of the simple pornography that, as far as she knew, was his only reading. He could not imagine any subjects more suited to prose than virginity, cruelty, initiation a
nd the unwilling victims; and he could peruse dogged variants on these themes with the thoroughness of Philippe investigating lost Atlantis. Sometimes he said with a straight face that he read for the beauty of the style. No one knew why he kept most of his books in a laundry hamper. Rose believed that he was afraid of shocking his French acquaintances. The books apart, there was not much indication of his tastes. None of the furniture in this room belonged to him: the dressing table with a three-way mirror had been left behind by a previous tenant; a hassock covered in orange taffeta was believed to have been the gift of Madame Roux. The rest of the furniture looked as if the varnish on it had not yet dried. Upon the dressing table stood two Japanese dolls with wobbly heads, a tin of Guerlain’s Jicky talcum—that would be Rose—and an ikon of the Virgin in a gilt frame. The Infant was disproportionately small—his head seemed no larger than a bell of the lilies he grasped.