—Madame, I beg your pardon. Marc is late because of me.
—Very bad. Two hours of detention each. And no water during lunch. Look how you’ve perspired.
She takes his handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wipes his brow with it.
—See?
* * *
The evenings are long and monotonous. Monsieur Rey, Monsieur Vincent, and Marc Bonneau play cards. Marthe Bonneau and Renée Rey converse. Stefan Valeriu, seeking sanctuary behind the open covers of a book, smokes.
—Monsieur Valeriu, Nicole went to bed a long time ago. It’s way past bedtime for children. You should follow her example.
—Just a little later, Madame Bonneau. I’ll go when I’ve finished this chapter.
—Oh, children these days…
Everybody laughs. Except Stefan, who appears absorbed by his book and raises an eyebrow, indicating that he is present and yet not.
—This Monsieur Valeriu, growls Monsieur Vincent, is a sick man. A couple of nights ago I caught him on the terrace talking to the stars. This morning he didn’t go out onto the lake, and now look at him—he says nothing and doesn’t get annoyed. Sure signs, by God…
—Please leave him be and don’t bother him. Am I not your guardian here, Monsieur Valeriu?
—Indeed, Madame Bonneau!
He looks straight at her, with an innocent, acquiescent smile that gives him the interior freedom to observe and imagine. Is she hiding nothing, this very beautiful woman? Her big, well-formed eyes rarely blink and see well. No moments of vagueness, no shadow of melancholy. Sometimes when she passes Stefan she lays her hand on his shoulder, a gesture she repeats a minute later with Marc. She’s at ease, possibly because she knows she is protected; protected by her maturity, by the presence of her son, by the grave composure of her beauty.
—Will your game keep Marc much longer?
—Until we’re finished…
—Fine, but who am I to take my evening walk with?
—With young Valeriu.
—Really? Would you accompany me, Monsieur Valeriu?
—If I’m allowed out at this late hour, Madame Bonneau…
—Indeed, it’s late for you. But we’ll make an exception this evening. Will you join us, Madame Rey?
—I won’t. I’m afraid it’s rather cold down at the lake at this hour.
They go together down the pathway to the gate of the guesthouse, toward the lakeshore. Having stepped outdoors, they are suddenly silenced, surprised by the vastness of the night, something which couldn’t have been guessed at inside, in the common room. They can hardly see, but each feels the presence of the other from the sound of their sandals on the pebbles. As they get closer to the lake, the night opens out, as though illuminated from within the body of water itself, by lights ranging from blue to green. A vague murmur issues from all along the lakeshore, perhaps the rustling of the forest or the lapping of the waves upon the shore, as steady as a pulse, from the sleeping plants, from the rocking of a boat that has floated loose from the jetty. Madame Bonneau has taken Stefan Valeriu’s arm, and not in a halfhearted way. On the contrary, her grip is firm and assured, and without any note of sensuality.
—Madame Bonneau, I want to tell you, you’re very beautiful.
—And very old.
—Perhaps. But above all beautiful. A long silence.
—And?
—And, that’s all!
From time to time an automobile passes, throwing a cone of harsh light on their faces before disappearing around a bend, leaving them feeling a little awkward, as though a stranger had entered a room while two people were having a private conversation. Stefan Valeriu notes this first moment of embarrassment and counts it among his victories.
* * *
Marthe Bonneau is staying on the first floor, at the far end of the guesthouse grounds. From his second-floor room on an oblique wing of the building, Stefan surveys her window without arousing suspicion. He has seen her just now, after breakfast, leaving her group of friends on the terrace and entering her lodgings. She stopped in her doorway and waved back at them—a wave of tiredness or sleepiness. Then she opened her window and her porcelain arms flashed briefly in the sunlight as she let her shutters down.
Stefan made his move without pausing to reflect on what he was doing or risking. He took the stairs quickly, strode across the garden and rapped on her door, and didn’t pause for her response. He’ll say the first thing that crosses his mind, doesn’t matter what.
—Is Marc here?
—You know he isn’t. He’s in Grenoble. Didn’t you accompany him to the station yourself yesterday?
—Well…
—Well then, come on inside, since that’s what you’re here for!
She’s reclining on a sofa by the window, an unopened book in her hand. She seems unsurprised by his visit.
—Come here and sit down.
Stefan’s hand goes automatically to his collar, as though to straighten an imaginary tie. It’s curious how her presence always makes him feel improperly or negligently attired and inadequate before her studied, calm simplicity. He is bothered in particular by a lock of hair that he tries to tame but that always falls over his forehead. It makes him feel that he must look unkempt next to her tidy beauty; that she must dislike this about him.
—I was watching you a little earlier, before lunch, when you were swimming. I was on the shore with Renée Rey and we both enjoyed the sight. You swim beautifully.
—Madame, I came to speak to you about another matter entirely.
He’d like to take her hand in his, suddenly, in order to clarify matters, but he is uncertain whether he should act on the impulse, and this makes him pause in his speech also. He hesitates. She looks at him with the same protective smile and, with the most relaxed air she takes his hand in hers, as though to say, Look, it’s very simple, you shouldn’t torture yourself over such trifles.
—Look, here comes Renée Rey. Madame Rey, won’t you keep us company? Then, to Stefan: I like this woman. Just as I like Marc, and I like you. All three of you are young and that’s lovely to behold, for someone like me, who is past all that.
* * *
She has invited him along with her on a Sunday morning visit to a nearby village where there is a church with curious eighteenth-century stained glass windows that they had noticed when passing through on a previous occasion. She’s wearing a long, black, high-cut dress and a wide-brimmed hat, which makes her composed features calmer still. She’s leaning against a central column, with Stefan to her right and Marc to her left, both in their holiday clothes.
Imagining how his group would look from a distance, Stefan Valeriu suddenly feels like a decorative detail in a predetermined tableau. This church, deliberately chosen, the two old women on their knees nearby, Madame Bonneau’s austere dress, their open collars, the cool air beneath the cupola…
—Maman, que tu es belle, Marc whispers.
For the first time, Stefan regards her with hostility, without actually raising his eyes to her, for fear of disturbing the pose. He watches her out of the corner of his eye, from his simulated attitude of ease. How this woman must have chosen the exact place to stop, the column she would happen to lean against, the hand that would stay half-covered, because the act of unbuttoning her glove would be surprised by the pipe organ and abandoned! How she must have premeditated the way her head is tilted slightly back, how her lower lip is relaxed, no more able to continue smiling, the slight flaring of her nostrils…
Maman, que tu es belle!
Madame Bonneau responds to Marc by resting her hand on his shoulder. The other hand then rests on Stefan’s shoulder, for symmetry.
In a moment, he is tempted by the thought of breaking up the group. A surge of indignation. He shifts slightly, imperceptibly, to the right, and her hand, momentarily unsupported, falls.
* * *
It is the third
day of Stefan Valeriu’s tactical withdrawal. Since the incident in the church, he has met with Marthe Bonneau only in company. The evening joke has ceased to function.
—Monsieur Valeriu, Nicole has gone to bed. Children should be tucked in by now.
—You’re right, Madame. It’s late.
He stood up, put out his cigarette, closed his book, and politely wished them all a good night. Her eyes sought his several times. When he chanced to meet them, he looked away with that same apologetic gesture you make when you find you have unwittingly glanced at a letter someone was writing. She has asked him on several occasions to join her on a local excursion, and Stefan has declined decorously, offering entirely plausible reasons.
—I’m terribly sorry, Madame. I promised some friends in Aix—you remember, my Romanian friends, the ones I met last Saturday on the lake?—promised I’d take a trip to see them. If I could telephone them, it would be simple. But a telephone, in this wilderness…
Stefan Valeriu has some experience of the power of such polite rebuffs. He tells himself that Madame Bonneau’s confident facade will eventually crumble in the face of them. Small signs of irritation are visible: a trace of being offended in her smile, the abrupt way she puts on and takes off her gloves, a forced indifference in her speech. Just now, after breakfast, as they rose and moved outside in random groups, Madame Bonneau, whom Renée Rey had engaged in a discussion that looked as if it would take some time, sought his eyes and tried to signal to him to wait, that she wished to tell him something. But he, busy filling his pipe, judged he could afford to ignore such a discreet appeal. He loped away slowly and headed upward toward the woods and his usual place. Madame Bonneau watched him in agitation, not knowing how to make her request explicit because of Madame Rey, who was speaking animatedly. In feigning incomprehension, Stefan had adopted his most innocent expression. Now, in this hidden place, he relives the scene and savors all the details, maliciously. He laughs openly, immodestly: he has won.
At last, Marthe Bonneau is on her own. She looks out past the terrace railings for a sign of him, spies him, maybe, and sets off toward the woods. Stefan hears her dress rustling against the vegetation. Lying as he is in the grass, he digs his fingers into the earth, to be sure of his self-control.
—I’ll wager, Madame Bonneau, that you’re just passing through by chance.
—You lose the bet. I came to see you.
A plain and simple answer, without artifice. Stefan Valeriu’s irony hangs uselessly, like the tension in somebody who has gone to unlock a door with a skeleton key, only to find it open. Her reply—like a single chess move—has invalidated a victory striven for over three days.
—May I sit beside you?
He is stretched out on the grass. She sits, leaning back against a hazel tree, dominating him by the simple act of looking down at him. Stefan feels how evocative this arrangement is—perhaps accidental—of her attitude of watchfulness and his of freedom and indifference. And he laughs, not knowing if her aptitude for finding the most poised and dignified pose is deliberate or instinctive. But it’s all the same in the end, whether it’s conscious or instinctive. Her superior vantage is the source of her incontestable beauty. A beauty even clearer in this afternoon sunlight.
—No doubt about it, Madame Bonneau. You’re very beautiful.
—No, my dear friend. Very calm, that’s all. Though sometimes they’re the same thing.
—Now, for example…
—No. Because I’m certainly not calm now. Because I’m leaving tomorrow!
Stefan doesn’t trust himself to speak. He fears he might get to his feet if he begins. He closes his eyes and waits.
—I’m leaving tomorrow and I wonder if I haven’t stayed too long already. A moment too long.
—Meaning?
For a moment she doesn’t speak, and no shadow falls over her cheek, which Stefan, who is gazing at it, would like to see devastated by the pain of repressed longing. The same self-assured expression, the same symmetrical features framing that vigilant smile.
—Meaning?
—Meaning, the way you walked across the terrace this morning in a white shirt, with an open collar. Your foreign name, that nobody in the guesthouse knows how to pronounce. Your earnest, confused youthfulness, your still unlived life, the foreign newspapers you get sent from afar, the letters that arrive for you with their strange stamps. Your gruff, unsociable exterior, your bursts of enthusiasm, your passion for books and lounging in the grass. It’s all very appealing.
Stefan seeks her hand and kisses it, but all he encounters is a woman who is so calm, so self-assured, and just surprised by his cold grip, that he can neither drop her hand, fearing the gesture would be too uncouth, nor keep it in his. So he proposes that they leave:
—It’s late, Madame. Nicole hasn’t gone to bed yet, but it’s late.
FOUR
A farewell scene at a railway station in the mountains at the end of the holidays, with numerous handshakes, impatient exclamations, and promises to write and to meet again. The entire guesthouse has come to see Marthe Bonneau off, and they gather around her solitary figure noisily, and she is quiet and vaguely intimidated by their effusions, perhaps a little embarrassed at not being able to be more communicative than she is used to being. She caresses Nicole affectionately and gives precise answers to imprecise questions.
Elsewhere on the platform, Marc is talking animatedly with Renée Rey. Stefan Valeriu notes this detail in passing and wonders for the first time if something has occurred between them which he, with his own preoccupations, has failed to register. But it is a flicker of a thought and he is once again caught up in the atmosphere on the platform, simultaneously sincere and artificial. As the train is about to leave, Madame Bonneau extends her arm out the window to shake his hand and shouts:
—We’re waiting for you in Paris! I hope you’ll come visit Marc!
Which could be a code, to be understood by them alone. But which might also just mean, I hope you’ll come visit Marc.
Funny! concludes Stefan, arriving back at the guesthouse an hour later, when, in the garden, he feels very alone and suspended before the remaining four weeks, which look pointless to him now. And with this “Funny!” he decides to draw a line under this amorous interlude which now, in the absence of the woman, seems tiring and far away to him. He looks at the calendar and sees that it’s only the middle of August and looks in the guide for a still-unvisited castle in the area. Then he lights his pipe and goes for a wander.
* * *
In the evening, after dinner, Stefan finds himself momentarily disconcerted, deriving mostly from regret that he’s unoccupied at an hour which until yesterday he would have spent with everybody in the common room. Who could replace Marc at cards or Madame Bonneau in conversation? The windows are open in the common room, the familiar voices within can be heard, blue tobacco smoke drifts in the lamplight. The terrace seems bigger than before, the night deeper, and there is something steady and strong in the far-off reflections on the lake. It’s good, very good, to hear the sound of footsteps on the damp earth, to lean against the parapet of the terrace, the entire valley beneath you, not expecting anyone and not wanting anything.
Somebody has approached silently through the grass. It’s Renée Rey. He feels her warm breath on his cheek.
—Why are you sad?
He is about to reply sincerely, I’m not sad at all. But this is replaced, almost unintentionally, with:
—What are you asking? You know full well.
Her eyes shine intensely.
—Really?
And she falls into his arms, seeking his mouth, her fumbling, inexpert kisses falling where they will. But she has a moment of doubt.
—And Madame Bonneau?
—Madame Bonneau? Don’t you understand? It was a game, I had to hide, to mislead you, to prevent anything untoward occurring. But now that you’ve found out, I will ha
ve to leave…
—No, no, no! You have to stay, for me, with me. Oh, if only you could know…And she showers him again with her wild, inexperienced kisses, while from the common room Monsieur Rey calls her to bed, because it’s past midnight and the card game has ended.
* * *
He is woken, as usual, by the sound of bells: cows ascending a track behind the guesthouse, under his open window. For a few moments he lies with his eyes half-open, lingering in the warmth of semi-slumber, feeling the suggestion between his lashes of the sunlight spilling into the room, mixed with the smell of wet grass and occasional shouts from outside. It was a sudden, triumphant, deep sleep, imbued with happiness, the way the black earth must feel the underground spring that feeds it.
This private victory song bothers him. Stefan Valeriu does not know enough. The fact in hand, last night’s little bit of play-acting, should at very most amuse him, but he’s delighted with it. That’s not good. “I’m an imbecile!” He dresses quickly, slips into his sandals, passes his fingers through his hair a couple of times, throws his bathing suit over his shoulders, and goes downstairs. In the garden, the morning is even more brilliant than he had guessed: the lake sparkles promisingly in the distance.
—Monsieur Valeriu!
The shout is from somewhere above, and Stefan has to scan the front of the building twice to discover Renée at one of the windows, poorly hidden behind curtains.
—Good morning Madame Rey.
—Won’t you come up for a minute, to get that book?
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