She agonizes over Mike, and yet the thought of her own suffocation were she to stay overwhelms all others. She books her passage and sends her son back to Maine.
* * *
The ship, a single-class steamer bound for Le Havre, is called Liberté. A fitting name, she thinks, though worries about Mike’s unhappiness keep her from feeling terribly free until the second evening out from New York, when she meets a handsome Frenchman, a doctor named Destouches. Louis Ferdinand Destouches. He says the name as if she might recognize it, and when she doesn’t, shrugs to confirm she couldn’t possibly.
This takes place in the ship’s narrow dining room. When she enters, most tables are already occupied by families and large parties of young people traveling together. Those few passengers on their own wander the edges, looking for friendly faces. She finds herself seated with five strangers, all men. More Americans on business, two disembarking in Portsmouth, another traveling on to Frankfurt. The remaining two are heading to Paris, and before the entrée is served, both have offered to take her to dinner there, or to a show. All five laugh at her jokes, and the two closest to her pour wine into her glass as soon as she empties it. They smile feral smiles as she unwraps her stole to reveal athletic shoulders—she was captain of her high school basketball team, as well as its sole Jew—and a long neck. The most attractive of them has bits of bread stuck between his teeth, the tallest unappealingly bushy eyebrows. One of the others—she can’t tell which—smells ripely of sweat.
The Frenchman approaches just as the meal ends. When she stands, he takes her hand lightly and releases it before introducing himself. His accent is so thick she has a hard time understanding what he says. But she thinks he tells her she has the appearance of an artist, the only one on the entire ship. He is sloppily dressed but fierce-looking, with a large head, dark hair combed back from a widow’s peak, prominent cheekbones, dazzling blue eyes. He’s an inch or two shorter than all the other men, but the low tones of his voice and his way of leaning forward as he speaks diminish them. He is bold yet nervous, fidgeting with his tie as if it chokes him, and after saying a few more words she can’t make out gives a nod, shuffles backward, and disappears into the crowd exiting the room.
One of her dinner companions suggests stepping outside to look at stars, but she excuses herself, says the wine has made her dizzy. In her cabin she studies a picture of Mike, dapper in a tuxedo, though dour, taken just before attending a concert with Charles’s insufferable relatives. Later, when most people are asleep and the passageways are quiet, she does go out on deck. The stars are hidden behind clouds she can’t see. Beyond the ship’s lights, everything is black. She can’t distinguish ocean from sky.
* * *
She spots the Frenchman again the next day, soon after lunch. He is seated in a card room in which the tables have all been moved to one side. A thin, stooped man stands next to him, handing out books to people waiting in line. The Frenchman, Destouches, signs them, hands them back with a little dip of his head, unsmiling. She learns from another passenger—a sharp-faced Parisian who looks at her with disdain, as if in not knowing already she is either ignorant or mad—that in addition to being a doctor, he is also a novelist whose first book was published to great acclaim some months earlier, called a masterpiece by many critics, herald of a new French literature, one more raw and honest and free than any previous. He writes under a pen name, Céline, in tribute to his grandmother. He is returning home after traveling to California in hopes of having the book made into a film. Will it be? Louise asks, but the woman shakes her head. Cowards, she says. Communists. The producers were warned before he arrived, alerted to his political leanings, and as a result they all declined. What those political leanings are, the woman doesn’t say.
Céline. Once Louise hears the name she can’t connect him with any other. She doesn’t stand in line for a book and doesn’t think he has seen her before she walks away. But when she arrives for dinner, he is waiting for her. His slender companion hands her two copies of the novel. In one is just his signature, he says, in the other a special inscription. The book is thick, at least five hundred pages, and heavy, and to hold two she must use both hands. The simplicity of its cover appeals to her. White, with red and black type, no image. She likes the sound of the title too, but knows enough French only to decipher voyage and de la nuit. A voyage of the night strikes her as both mysterious and enticing. The meaning of au bout she will have to do without.
The slender companion vanishes, and Louise joins Céline at his table. He speaks quickly, with vehement gestures, and again she misses many of his words. He jumps from topic to topic but always follows a central thread: the essential corruption of humanity, the yearning for filth even among the most so-called refined of society—he mutters this while jutting his chin at a well-dressed couple across the table—which itself is a cesspool, needing to be emptied and scoured. Everything he says is bitter and morose, and yet there’s a charm in his passionate insistence, a relief after so many years of listening to Charles and his relatives speak with mild disinterest about even those things they claim to value most. He stares at her as if he will soon pounce and clamp his jaws around her neck. She wants to hear him say more about how he recognized her as an artist just by looking at her, but for now he talks only about himself, about his family, his mother who traveled house to house selling liniments and herbal remedies so he could study legitimate medicine.
I’m peasant stock, he tells her. Last of a line. When you have a head like mine, you know you’ve reached the end.
After the meal she expects him to invite her for a drink, maybe at one of the ship’s several bars or maybe in his cabin. And she is prepared to accompany him to either. Instead he delivers his nervous bow, tells her how much he has enjoyed their conversation, asks if they might continue to talk tomorrow. His companion has reappeared, bony and silent, and the two of them hasten belowdecks. In her cabin she flips through his novel, unable to read any of it. Like the text, the inscription is in French, the handwriting loose and rumpled like his suit, and she can make out only a handful of simple words: bien and au and courage. Another looks like ravissant, but she can’t be sure. The image of Charles comes to her for no reason she can imagine, taking off his trousers and carefully folding them before joining her in bed. She has a headache but cannot sleep. She goes upstairs, finds a bar, orders a whiskey on ice, and interrogates the bartender about which cocktails he enjoys mixing most and why.
* * *
The crossing takes seven days, and a part of four she spends with Céline. At times they sit on deck, enjoying sun and a light breeze. On a stormy day, both are mildly seasick and huddle on velvet sofas in a deserted lounge, where Céline smokes to calm his stomach and Louise drinks to settle hers. He still asks nothing about her life, why she’s traveling to Paris, what sort of art she hopes to produce, but she takes his silences as opportunities to tell him about her failed marriage, her previous work with Hofmann, her plans for the summer. If I like it, perhaps I’ll stay, she says. She does not mention Mike, though almost immediately a vision of him springs to mind, standing on the shore of Rockland, staring out over the ocean into which his mother has disappeared. Céline, brooding or nauseated, says nothing.
Later, when the sea has calmed and they have returned to the deck, he tells her that Paris is a toilet, full of nothing but thieves and con artists, and yet compared to America it’s an oasis, a place where you can speak your opinions freely and not fear reprisal. She recalls what the woman said about Hollywood producers and wonders what opinions scared them off. It’s the only place to live, he goes on, a disgusting city but an honest one, where all depravity is on display. He has seen it firsthand, patients coming to him with wounds from scuffles, with horrifying sexual diseases, everything left to fester because all have been contaminated by the pestilence of contemporary life.
Every time he mentions his work as a doctor, she is surprised anew. Afterward she quickly forgets
how he makes his living. It’s as if the information won’t stick in her mind, crowded out by the heft of his novel. Or maybe it’s because she can’t imagine going to him for medical attention. With those harsh, inward-focused eyes and large hands with blunt fingers, how could he possibly ease someone’s suffering?
As if she has spoken the question aloud, he says, waving a hand, It’s mostly pointless, this whole, how you say, enterprise. He heals those he can, but soon enough they are ground up again by the machinery of decadence, of the world going to rot. In times like these, he goes on, who should rise to the surface, like shit floating on a flooded river? Yes, the Jew, the bottom-feeder, thriving on the foulness and decay of a poisoned culture, poisoning it further, until those few left with dignity must burn everything down and plant new seeds in the ashes.
His face is flushed as he speaks, flecks of spittle at the edges of his lips, and yet his voice remains calm, with the lilt of amusement. When he finishes, he smiles and apologizes, not for his sentiments but for his mixed metaphors. Louise tries not to reveal anything by her expression, though she can’t help leaning away. Surely he knows what she is, if not from her features, then from her name. And yet he keeps staring at her with the same hunger, the same ferocious need. Only now he is finally ready to act on it. He moves toward her, sweeps an arm across her shoulders, bends to kiss her. She turns away, swivels out of his grasp, hurries inside without looking back.
But for the rest of the day she is less horrified than fascinated. It’s an important discovery, she thinks, a profound one: that someone can detest what he desires or desire what he detests. Which comes first, the wanting or the loathing, she doesn’t know.
* * *
On the last day of the voyage, she takes her meals in her cabin and does not encounter Céline again before the ship docks for the last time. She doesn’t see him on the train from Le Havre and learns from the sharp-faced woman that he disembarked at Cherbourg. She assumes that will be the end, she won’t hear from him again. But he soon contacts her in Paris, sends a note to her hotel, invites her to lunch. He does not apologize for what he has said, nor for trying to kiss her afterward, does not acknowledge their last meeting in any way. His note is brief and self-deprecating. Dear Miss Nevelson, he writes in English. By now you must have been married over and over again. What passion will be left for me? During the summer she sees him once, and though he flatters her with compliments, he is otherwise distracted and distant, avoiding all serious topics. She finds herself both relieved and dejected when they part. He kisses both her cheeks lightly, the smell of tobacco lingering until she is well down the street.
Later she learns from an acquaintance that she is not Céline’s first American infatuation. He once lived with a girl from California, with similarly strong shoulders and elegant neck. Not long ago this girl returned to the States and married, leaving Céline heartbroken. To find that she served as someone’s replacement is less insulting to Louise than sad. She pictures Céline entering the ship’s dining room, scanning the tables for a passable likeness. She imagines Charles similarly scouting for someone new in the lobby of a theater or the reception hall of his synagogue, someone who will both remind him of what he has lost and help him forget.
Her time in Paris is, on the whole, disappointing. She sees much artwork that moves her, attends parties, has many flirtations. But the mood is generally bleak. Too many people are out of work. There are fears of more anti-parliamentarist demonstrations like the one in February that left fifteen dead. She considers returning to Berlin, where she was so much happier last summer, but she meets a number of German artists and musicians and writers who have fled since Hitler became chancellor, all of whom warn her to stay away. Hofmann, she learns, has left too, emigrated to New York. So why has she come at all?
Mostly, though, her disappointment is personal rather than political. Her friendships feel shallow. The prospect of establishing a career in Europe seems more daunting the longer she stays and the more she sees. Here the tree of modern art is massive, with many limbs, thick and healthy and intimidating. She could be no more than a small leaf, clinging desperately to a twig. But at home, in the country Céline described as a swamp of naiveté and repression, she might grow to be a branch, or perhaps, with enough effort, a part of the trunk.
She visits Chartres, Versailles. Depressed, she travels to the Riviera, sleeps with a sailor in Nice, and boards a ship home from Genoa. She arrives just as summer ends, when Mike is due back in school, and pretends this has been her plan all along.
* * *
To her surprise, Céline writes to her in New York. They begin an extended correspondence, the strangest of her life, part seduction, part debasement. He invites her to come live with him in Italy, or perhaps he will move to America, even if it is a reeking bog, filled with the dregs of the earth—though now that Germany is being purged, he writes, France too is overrun with slime. Why she puts up with these letters she doesn’t know, except that they captivate her, so many contradictions on display. Or perhaps she is simply lonely, longing for any interest to distract her from the sight of her empty bed.
By then she has settled into an apartment on Fifteenth Street and Third Avenue. It’s a large space though spartan, with a bedroom for Mike and a studio for herself. While Mike is in school, she spends her mornings painting. She takes classes at the Art Students League, with Hofmann again, and George Grosz, both of whom are shaken by their flight from the darkness that has so quickly consumed their home country. She wishes she could offer them some comfort, but their distress puts her off, makes her keep her distance. She wants only to admire them, see them as great men, full of wisdom and fortitude they can pass on to her. She tells neither about her exchanges with Céline.
When Diego Rivera comes to New York to work on several commissions, she is enlisted to help paint one of his murals, not the monumental Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center, but a smaller one called The Workers, close to her apartment. She is in awe of Diego, approves of his appetites. His second wife, Lupe, shows up at one of the many parties he throws, kisses everyone, dances with her eyes closed. She is beautiful, though less mesmerizing than his current wife, Frida, still in her twenties and shy, though with a calm poise that makes Louise forget she’s almost a decade older. Both women smell faintly of semen when they hug her goodbye. She doesn’t think Diego loves them so much as he feeds on them. They set flame to his passions, stoke his painting. If she weren’t afraid of draining what little fuel she has for her own work, she might offer up her heat to him as well.
Instead she begins to experiment with sculpture, plaster figures painted in primary colors. They don’t satisfy her, except that she can feel herself searching for form, knows for the first time that she will eventually find it. She shows pieces in group exhibitions, but galleries turn her away. She occasionally considers throwing herself out a window, but her studio is on the first floor, the sidewalk only ten feet below the sill.
* * *
Céline’s letters increasingly confuse her. After Hindenburg’s death and Hitler’s ultimate ascent to power, he writes sincere condolences, saying he hopes any friends or relatives she has in Germany have managed to escape—and if not, that he may be able to help with arrangements. But then he castigates the French government for accepting refugees, whose stink pervades the air whenever he walks through the streets. Sometimes she doesn’t respond for months, and then he pleads with her not to abandon their friendship: it is too important to him, he writes, she is the only woman in his life who is both beautiful and intelligent, and knowing such a possibility exists has been crucial to maintaining any hope for a world so deeply mired in excrement.
And then he visits her in New York. When he calls, Mike is in school, and she doesn’t hesitate to invite him to her apartment. She gives him coffee, and he sits across from her, smoking, smiling a pained smile. She wears a loose dress, with a low neckline and no sleeves. She has downed a tumbler of whiskey and left the door
to her bedroom open. She thinks, I am free to do whatever I please. She can gratify herself or harm herself as she chooses. There is no one to stop her, no one to judge. Céline leans forward, elbows on knees. His voice is low, desperate. How would you like to marry me? he asks.
She thinks she ought to laugh but doesn’t. She knows he is serious. She pictures Charles again, when he proposed at her parents’ house in Rockland, when she was just a girl yearning for the promise of city life. She thinks of the brutality of that sailor in Nice, the hammering of his huge body that both unnerved and enthralled her. She sees shit floating in a swollen river. Which is worse, she wonders, the fanatic who wants what he hates or the one who wants what hates her?
After the war she will read about him in Life magazine. Collaborator. Nazi spy, propagandist. She will learn about the vile pamphlets he has authored, calling for the extermination of all Jews in France. She will tell those friends who knew of their correspondence that she is appalled, disgusted. She will give away the books he inscribed for her, toss his letters into the fireplace. She will regret doing so, not right away, but later, after Mike has grown up and moved out, while working on the first of the many walls of black boxes for which she will become known around the world, filled with arrangements of found wooden blocks and cylinders that suggest the messy intricacies of mind and heart. She will think he was one of the few who understood her, because, like her, nothing could ever appease him. And she’ll think, I wasn’t ready then.
You know, dear, she says now, you would be worth more dead than alive to me.
She isn’t quite sure what she means by it. But he doesn’t object, just nods, shows his woeful smile, finishes his coffee and cigarette. At the door he tells her not to worry, she has all the strength she needs to thrive, he glimpsed it in their very first encounter. But then he asks, as he steps into the hall, Is this a world worth thriving in?
The Best American Short Stories 2020 Page 29