Overhead in a Balloon Read online

  Soon after the New Year, however, there came a message from the guidance counsellor of the Jesuit school, summoning the Clairevoies for “a frank and open discussion.”

  “About being immortal?” said Roger to Simone, recalling an alarming talk with another Jesuit teacher long ago.

  “About your son,” she replied.

  A card on his door identified the counsellor as “F.-X. Rousseau, Orientation.” Orientation wore a track suit and did not look to Roger like a Jesuit, or even much like a priest. Leaning forward (the Clairevoies instinctively drew back), he offered American cigarettes before lighting his own. It was not Luc’s chances of passing that seemed to worry him but Luc’s fragmented image of women. On the Rorschach test, for instance, he had seen a ballet skirt and a pair of legs, and a female head in a fishing net.

  “You brought me here to tell me what?” said Roger. “My son has poor eyesight?”

  Simone placed her hand on Father Rousseau’s desk as she might have touched his sleeve. She was saying, Be careful. My husband is irritable, old-fashioned, ill. “I think that Father Rousseau is trying to tell us that Luc has no complete view of women because Luc has no complete view of himself as a man. Is that it?”

  Father Rousseau added, “And he cannot see his future because he can’t see himself.”

  It was Roger’s turn to remonstrate with Luc. Simone suggested masculine, virile surroundings for their talk, and so he took Luc to the café across the street. There, over beer for Luc and mineral water for Roger, he told Luc about satisfaction. It was the duty of children to satisfy their parents. Roger, by doing extremely well at his studies, had given Luc’s grandparents this mysterious pleasure. They had been able to tell their friends, “Roger has given us great satisfaction.” He took Luc on a fresh tour of things to come, showing him the slow-grinding machinery of state competitive examinations against which fathers measured their sons. He said, Your future. If you fail. A poor degree is worse than none. Thousands of embittered young men, all voting Socialist. If you fail, you will sink into the swamp from which there is no rising. Do you want to sell brooms? Sweep the streets? Sell tickets in the Métro? Do you want to spend your life in a bank?

  “Not that there is anything wrong with working in a bank,” he corrected. Encrusted in his wife’s family was a small rural bank with a staff of seventeen. Simone did not often see her provincial cousins, but the bank was always mentioned with respect. To say “a small bank” was no worse than saying “a small crown jewel.” Simone, in a sense, personified a reliable and almost magical trade; she had brought to Roger the goods and the dream. What had Roger brought? Hideous Empire furniture and a dubious nineteenth-century title Simone scarcely dared use because of the Communists.

  Only the word “Socialist” seemed to stir Luc. “We need a good little civil war,” he declared, as someone who has never been near the ocean might announce, “We need a good little tidal wave” – so Roger thought.

  He said, “There are no good little civil wars.” But he knew what was said of him: that his heart attacks had altered his personality, made him afraid. On a November day, Roger and his father had followed the coffin of Charles Maurras, the nationalist leader, jailed after the war for collaboration. “My son,” said Roger’s father, introducing Roger to thin-faced men, some wearing the Action Française emblem. Roger’s father had stood for office on a Royalist platform, and had come out of the election the last of five candidates, one an impertinent youngster with an alien name, full of “z”s and “k”s. He was not bitter; he was scornful and dry, and he wanted Roger to be dry and proud. Roger had only lately started to think, My father always said, and, My father believed. As he spoke, now, to Luc about satisfaction and failure, he remembered how he had shuffled behind the hearse of a dead old man, perhaps mistaken, certainly dispossessed. They got up to leave, and Roger bowed to an elderly woman he recognized. His son had already turned away.

  In order to give Luc a fully virile image, Simone redecorated his room. The desk lamp was a galleon in full sail with a bright red shade – the colour of decision and activity. She took down the photograph of Roger’s graduating class and hung a framed poster of Che Guevara. Stepping back to see the effect, she realized Guevara would never do. The face was feminine, soft. She wondered if the whole legend was not a hoax and if Guevara had been a woman in disguise. Guevara had no political significance, of course; he had become manly, decorative kitsch. (The salesman had assured her of this; otherwise, she would never have run the risk of offending Roger.) As she removed the poster she noticed for the first time a hole drilled in the wall. She put her eye to it and had a partial view of the maid’s bathroom, used in the past by a succession of au pair visitors, in Paris to improve their French and to keep an eye on a younger Luc.

  She called Roger and made him look: “Who says Luc has no view of women?”

  Roger glanced round at the new curtains and bedspread, with their pattern of Formula 1 racing cars. Near the bed someone – Luc, probably – had tacked a photo of Hitler. Roger, without saying anything, took it down. He did not want Luc quite that manly.

  “You can’t actually see the shower,” said Simone, trying the perspective again. “But I suppose that when she stands drying on the mat … We’d better tell him.”

  “Tell Luc?”

  “Rousseau. Orientation.”

  Not “Father Rousseau,” he noticed. It was not true that women were devoted guardians of tradition. They rode every new wave like so much plankton. My father was right, he decided. He always said it was a mistake to give them the vote. He said they had no ideas – just notions. My father was proud to stand up for the past. He was proud to be called a Maurrassien, even when Charles Maurras was in defeat, in disgrace. But who has ever heard of a Maurrassienne? The very idea made Roger smile. Simone, catching the smile, took it to mean a sudden feeling of tolerance, and so she chose the moment to remind him they would have an au pair guest at Easter – oh, not to keep an eye on Luc; Luc was too old. (She sounded sorry.) But Luc had been three times to England, to a family named Brunt, and now, in all fairness, it was the Clairevoies’ obligation to have Cassandra.

  “Another learner?” Roger was remembering the tall, glum girls from northern capitals and their strides in colloquial French: That is my friend. He did not sleep in my bed – he spent the night on the doormat. I am homesick. I am ill. A bee has stung me. I am allergic and may die.

  “You won’t have to worry about Cassandra,” Simone said. “She is a mature young woman of fifteen, a whole head taller than Luc.”

  Simone clipped a leash to the dog’s collar and grasped Roger firmly by the arm. She was taking two of her charges for a walk, along streets she used to follow when Luc was still in his pram. On Boulevard Lannes a taxi stopped and two men wearing white furs, high-heeled white boots, and Marilyn Monroe wigs got out and made for the Bois. Roger knew that transvestites worked the fringe of the Bois now, congregating mostly towards the Porte Maillot, where there were hotels. He had heard the women in the café across the street complaining that the police were not vigilant enough, much the way an established artisan might grumble about black-market labour. Roger had imagined them vaguely as night creatures, glittering and sequined, caught like dragonflies in the headlights of roving automobiles. This pair was altogether real, and the man who had just paid the taxi-driver shut his gold-mesh handbag with the firm snap of a housewife settling the butcher’s bill. The dog at once began to strain and bark.

  “Brazilians,” said Simone, who watched educational television in the afternoon. “They send all their money home.”

  “But in broad daylight,” said Roger.

  “They don’t earn as much as you think.”

  “There could be little children playing in the Bois.”

  “We can’t help our children by living in the past,” said Simone. Roger wondered if she was having secret talks with Father Rousseau. “Stop that,” she told the barking dog.

  “He’s not de
liberately trying to hurt their feelings,” Roger said. Because he disliked animals – in particular, dogs – he tended to make excuses for the one they owned. Actually, the dog was an accident in their lives, purchased only after the staff psychologist in Luc’s old school had said the boy’s grades were poor because he had no siblings to love and hate, no rivals for his parents’ attention, no responsibility to any living creature.

  “A dog will teach my son to add and subtract?” said Roger. Simone had wondered if a dog would make Luc affectionate and polite, more grateful for his parents’ devotion, aware of the many sacrifices they had made on his behalf.

  Yes, yes, they had been assured. A dog could do all that.

  Luc was twelve years old, the puppy ten weeks. Encouraged to find a name for him, Luc came up with “Mongrel.” Simone chose “Sylvestre.” Sylvestre spent his first night in Luc’s room – part of the night, that is. When he began to whine, Luc put him out. After that, Sylvestre was fed, trained, and walked by Luc’s parents, while Luc continued to find school a mystery and to show indifference and ingratitude. Want of thanks is a parent’s lot, but blindness to simple arithmetic was like an early warning of catastrophe. Luc’s parents had already told him he was to train as an engineer.

  “Do you know how stiff the competition is?” his mother asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to be turned down by the best schools?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to be sent to a third-rate school, miles from home? Have you thought about that?”

  Roger leaned on Simone, though he did not need to, and became querulous: “Sylvestre and I are two old men.”

  This was not what Simone liked to talk about. She said, “Your family never took you into consideration. You slept in your father’s study. You took second best.”

  “It didn’t feel that way.”

  “Look at our miserable country house. Look at your Cousin Henri’s estate.”

  “His godmother gave it to him,” said Roger, as though she needed reminding.

  “He should have given you compensation.”

  “People don’t do that,” said Roger. “All I needed was a richer godmother.”

  “The apartment is mine,” said Simone, as they walked arm in arm. “The furniture is yours. The house in the country is yours, but most of the furniture belongs to me. You paid for the pool and the tennis court.” It was not unpleasant conversation.

  Roger stopped in front of a pastry shop and showed Simone a chocolate cake. “Why can’t we have that?”

  “Because it would kill you. The specialist said so.”

  “We could have oysters,” Roger said. “I’m allowed oysters.”

  “Luc will be home,” said Simone. “He doesn’t like them.”

  Father Rousseau sent for the Clairevoies again. This time he wore a tweed jacket over a white sweater, with a small crucifix on one lapel and a Solidarność badge on the other. After lighting his cigarette he sat drumming his fingers, as if wondering how to put his grim news into focus. At last he said, “No one can concentrate on an exam and on a woman. Not at the same time.”

  “Women?” cried Simone. “What women?”

  “Woman,” Roger corrected, unheard.

  There was a woman in Luc’s life. It seemed unbelievable, but it was so.

  “French?” said Roger instantly.

  Father Rousseau was unable to swear to it. Her name was Katia, her surname Martin, but if Martin was the most common family name in France it might be because so many foreigners adopted it.

  “I can find out,” Simone interrupted. “What’s her age?”

  Katia was eighteen. Her parents were divorced.

  “That’s bad,” said Simone. “Who’s her father?”

  She lived in Biarritz with her mother, but came often to Paris to stay with her father and brother. Her brother belonged to a political debating society.

  “I’ve seen him,” said Simone. “I know the one. She’s a terrorist. Am I right?”

  Father Rousseau doubted it. “She is a spoiled, rich, under-educated young woman, used to having her own way. She is also very much in love.”

  “With Luc?” said Roger.

  “Luc is a Capricorn,” said Simone. “The most levelheaded of all the signs.”

  So was Katia, Father Rousseau said. She and Luc wrote “Capricorn loves Capricorn” in the dust on parked cars.

  “Does Luc want to marry her?” said Simone, getting over the worst.

  “He wants something.” But Father Rousseau hoped it would not be Katia. She seemed to have left school early, after a number of misadventures. She was hardly the person to inspire Luc, who needed a model he could copy. When Katia was around, Luc did not even pretend to study. When she was in Biarritz, he waited for letters. The two collected lump sugar from cafés but seemed to have no other cultural interest.

  “She’s from a rich family?” Simone said. “And she has just the one brother?”

  “Luc has got to pass his entrance examination,” said Roger. “After he gets his degree he can marry anyone he likes.”

  “ ‘Rich’ is a relative term,” said Simone, implying that Father Rousseau was too unworldly to define such a thing.

  Roger said, “How do you know about the sugar and ‘Capricorn loves Capricorn’ and how Luc and Katia got to know each other?”

  “Why, from Katia’s letters, of course,” said Father Rousseau, sounding surprised.

  “Did you keep copies?” said Simone.

  “Do you know that Luc is of age, and that he could take you to court for reading his mail?” said Roger.

  Father Rousseau turned to Simone, the rational parent. “Not a word of reproach,” he warned her. “Just keep an eye on the situation. We feel that Luc should spend the next few weeks at home, close to his parents.” He would come back to Rennes just before the examination, for last-minute heavy cramming. Roger understood this to be a smooth Jesuitical manner of getting rid of Luc.

  Luc came home, and no one reproached him. He promised to work hard and proposed going alone to the country house, which was near Auxerre. Simone objected that the place had been unheated all winter. Luc replied that he would live in one room and take his meals in the village. Roger guessed that Luc intended to spend a good amount of time with Cousin Henri, who lived nearby, and whom Luc – no one knew why – professed to admire. Cousin Henri and Roger enjoyed property litigation of long standing, but as there was a dim, far chance of Henri’s leaving something to Luc, Roger said nothing. And as Simone pointed out, meaning by this nothing unkind or offensive, any male model for Luc was better than none.

  In the meantime, letters from Katia, forwarded from Rennes, arrived at the Paris apartment. Roger watched in pure amazement the way Simone managed to open them, rolling a kitchen match under the flap. Having read the letter, she resealed it without trace. The better the quality of the paper, the easier the match trick, she explained. She held a page up to the light, approving the watermark.

  “We’ll need a huge apartment, because we will have so many children,” Katia wrote. “And we’ll need space for the sugar collection.”

  The only huge apartment Simone could think of was her own. “They wish we were dead,” she told Roger. “My son wishes I were out of the way.” She read aloud, “ ‘What would you be without me? One more little Frenchman, eternally studying for exams.’ ”

  “What does she mean by ‘little Frenchman’?” said Roger. He decided that Katia must be foreign – a descendant of White Russians, perhaps. There had been a colony in Biarritz in his father’s day, the men gambling away their wives’ tiaras before settling down as headwaiters and croupiers. Luc was entangled in a foreign love affair; he was already alien, estranged. Roger had seen him standing at the window, like an idle landowner in a Russian novel. What did Roger know about Russians? There were the modern ones, dressed in grey, with bulldog faces; there were the slothful, mournful people in books, the impulsive and slender
women, the indecisive men. But it had been years since Roger had opened a novel; what he saw were overlapping images, like stills from old films.

  “ ‘Where are you, where are you?’ “ read Simone. “ ‘There is a light in your parents’ room, but your windows are dark. I’m standing under the awning across the street. My shoes are soaked. I am too miserable to care.’

  “She can’t be moping in the rain and writing all at the same time,” said Simone. “And the postmark is Biarritz. She comes to Paris to stir up trouble. How does she know which room is ours? Luc is probably sick of her. He must have been at a meeting.”

  Yes, he had probably been at a meeting, sitting on the floor of a pale room, with a soft-voiced old man telling him about an older, truer Europe. Luc was learning a Europe caught in amber, unchanging, with trees for gods. There was no law against paganism and politics, or soft-voiced old men.

  At least there are no guns, Roger told himself. And where had Simone learned the way to open other people’s letters? He marvelled at Katia’s doing for his son what no woman had ever done for him; she had stood in the rain, crying probably, watching for a light.

  Ten days before Easter, Cassandra Brunt arrived. Her father was a civil servant, like Roger. He was also an author: two books had been published, one about Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, the other about the failure of the Maginot Line and the disgraceful conduct of the French officer class. Both had been sent to the Clairevoies, with courteous inscriptions. When Simone had gone over to England alone, to see if the Brunts would do for Luc, Mrs. Brunt confided that her husband was more interested in the philosophy of combat than in success and defeat. He was a dreamer, and that was why he had never got ahead. Simone replied that Roger, too, had been hampered by guiding principles. As a youth, he had read for his own pleasure. His life was a dream. Mrs. Brunt suggested a major difference: Mr. Brunt was no full-time dreamer. He had written five books, two of which had been printed, one in 1952 and one in 1966. The two women had then considered each other’s child, decided it was sexless and safe and that Luc and Cassandra could spend time under the same roof. After that, Luc crossed the Channel for three visits, while Simone managed not to have Cassandra even once. Her excuse was the extreme youth of Cassandra and the dangers of Paris. Now that Cassandra was fifteen Mrs. Brunt, suddenly exercising her sense of things owed, had written to say that Cassandra was ready for perils and the French.