by Brian Moore
She came to him, standing over him, holding him, pressing his head against her thigh. He felt her tremble. “Oh, Tom,” she said. “Come on, let’s go to the Jeu de Paume and look at Impressionists. Let’s not talk about anything until tomorrow, all right?”
“All right.”
•
Next morning, from a dream in which he and his sister ran along Coast Guard beach in Amagansett, pursued by two men with knives who wanted to kill them, he woke alarmed to stare at a strange ceiling, his mind slowly restoring him to Paris, to Peg’s big bed, and to Sheila beside him. But when he turned his head she was not there. For a while he listened, wondering if she were up and moving about in the flat. The only sound was the ticking of Peg’s alarm clock. He pulled on his jeans and went out into the corridor, thinking she might have gone downstairs for the breakfast croissants. But two croissants were already on a plate in the kitchen. Beside them he found a note.
Got up early and had breakfast. These
are yours, and there’s coffee on the
stove. Have gone for a walk. Will be
back about ten. Love, S.
He fingered the note. Alarm, the same unreasonable alarm he had felt earlier in his dream, came back as he stood staring out of the kitchen window at the shadows of the courtyard below. It was raining. Until this morning she had never wanted to be separated from him. Even yesterday, after their visit to the Jeu de Paume, when she decided to do her hair and he to go for a walk while she did it, she ran out after him, calling, “No, no, come back, come back, I want to be with you, I want to be with you,” chanting the words as though they were a mantra of her content. Yet today he was alone. He poured coffee and sat down, disconsolate, staring at the rain on the windowpane.
•
The Chapelle d’Accueil was in a side altar just off the nave on the river side of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. There was a confession box in there and, in front of the altar, a table with a lamp, lit while the priest was in attendance. On the wall, to the left, was a placard:
CONFESSIONS
Anglais—English
8-10 12-15 Horaires
M. Le Père Michel Brault
On the table in front of the priest were a large ledger and a manila folder which contained sheets of ruled notepaper. Mrs. Redden did not know the purpose of the ledger, or what was written in the folder. She came out of the shadows, going toward this chapel, which sat like a small lighted stage off from the gloom of the nave. The priest, the principal actor, looked up as she made her entrance, gesturing her to sit on the chair facing him across the table.
“Do you want me to hear your confession, Madame?” he asked, in heavily accented English.
“No, I’d just like to talk to someone.”
“Please,” he said. He did not look like a priest. He wore a gray cotton summer jacket, much like Protestant ministers wore at home. His stock was also gray, frayed at the place where it was attached to his white celluloid collar. She remembered her father, years ago, talking about his first visit to France, saying the French priests looked so poor it was a disgrace. But it was this poverty which had attracted her when, entering the cathedral, moving among the throngs of tourists who milled, unprayerful, in the nave, she saw this fat, weary old priest sitting at his table in a side altar, his cheap spectacles askew on his nose, his worn gray jacket, his baggy trousers. A priest should be poor. Irish priests were not.
He looked at her. He was waiting for her to begin.
“It’s about a friend of mine,” she said. She had decided to say this. “A friend who tried to kill herself.”
He nodded. He had the swollen, pitted nose of a drinker. His hand, placed flat on the folder as though he were swearing an oath, was large and white, unused to any toil. I shouldn’t have started this, she thought, it’s a mistake. “Father, do you know whether people who kill themselves think much about it before they do it?”
“Usually, yes.”
“But sometimes not?”
He felt his large nose with forefinger and thumb, pulling on it, preoccupied. “Possibly. Do you know of such a case?”
“Well, this woman had never thought about it. But last night she woke up and I think she wanted to kill herself.”
“She told you this?”
Mrs. Redden nodded.
“Madame, have you, yourself, ever thought about suicide?”
She looked at him sharply. “No,” she said. “Why?”
“Because intelligent people often do think about it. After all, as Camus has pointed out, it is perhaps the only serious personal question.”
An Irish priest would never say that. Suddenly she was able to tell him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you the truth. I am talking about myself. There isn’t a friend.”
He nodded, waiting for her to continue.
“Last night,” she said, “I woke up. I hadn’t had a nightmare or anything. The moment I woke up I felt drawn to go out on the balcony of the apartment I’m staying in. I felt I must climb up on the balcony railing and push myself out and jump. It was as though something were leading me on, making me do it.”
“But you did not do it?”
“Obviously not.”
He smiled apologetically. “Yes, of course. But did you try?”
“Do you mean, did I climb up on the rail? Yes, I did. But after a while I got hold of myself and went inside again.”
Beyond, in the gloom of the cathedral, the organist struck a sudden practice chord, the sound immense and powerful like the roar of a God. The organist sounded a deep note, then a high, shrill one, then began to play the opening of a Bach fugue.
“Do you, perhaps, wish to punish someone?” the priest asked.
The organ, swelling, thundered to a stop, leaving behind a stillness in the vaulted roofs of stone.
“No.”
“Sometimes people think of their own death as a punishment,” the priest said. “A punishment of oneself. Or a punishment of others.”
“Yes. But I don’t want to punish anyone. Not even myself.”
The priest rotated his head slowly, as though he suffered from a crick in his neck. “Sometimes such wishes are unconscious.”
“Yes, I suppose. Perhaps I do wish to punish myself for what I’ve done. But I don’t think so. I feel enormously happy, most of the time.”
“Happy people do not wish to commit suicide, Madame.”
“But I am happy. Happier than I have ever been. I do have a difficult decision ahead of me. But I will make it.”
“And after you have made it,” the priest said, “will you still be happy?”
She turned away and looked at the wall to her right. On it hung a huge oil painting. The inscription read:
SAINT-PIERRE GUÉRISSANT
LES MALADES DE SON OMBRE
Laurent de La Hyre
Offert le premier Mai 1635 par
La Corporation des Orfèvres
“I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever I decide, my former life is over.”
“Madame, are you a Catholic?”
“I was. I don’t think I am any more.”
“When you came into the cathedral this morning, did you take Holy Water on your fingers and make the Sign of the Cross?”
“Yes.”
“And did you think, ‘God is here’?”
“No, Father, I did it from habit. And from respect for other people who might be believers. I didn’t come in to pray. I was walking along the Seine thinking of what happened to me last night. I felt I should talk to someone about it, a doctor, perhaps. And when I saw the cathedral I thought, Perhaps a priest has experience, people tell him things like this. So I came in. And then I saw you.”
The priest smiled, showing a large gap between’ his upper front teeth. “Eh bien, I hope I will be able to help. Could you, perhaps, tell me what sort of decision it is that you must make?”
In the silence of the nave, there came a distant murmur of tourists, a shuffling of many feet, as a conducte
d tour group passed by the side altar, some looking in with curiosity at Mrs. Redden and the priest. The priest ignored the interruption. When the tourists had gone, Mrs. Redden looked at him and shook her head.
“Would it help you, perhaps, if you could talk about it?”
Mrs. Redden slid her chair back abruptly and stood up. “Thank you, Father. It’s already helped me to talk to you.”
“You should talk to someone,” the priest said. “Are you living alone?”
“No.”
“Good. You should not be alone. Talk to a friend. Will you do that?”
She lowered her head.
“Or come and see me again. I am here every day except Sunday.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“God bless you, my child.”
The organ gonged in clear tones as the organist again played the opening of the fugue. In the nave a group of Japanese tourists clustered in a circle, as though waiting to perform some complicated stage maneuver. Some stared around, robot-fashion, their ears plugged to plastic cords attached to boxes containing recorded lectures. Others held cameras aloft. Flashbulbs struck in ellipses in the gloom. Mrs. Redden came down from the side altar, going along the left center aisle, passing a field of empty chairs. She looked up at the great cruciform shape of the roof above her head and, hearing the deep organ tones again, she thought of the question asked by the priest: “Did you think, ‘God is here’?” No, God is not here. Notre-Dame is a museum, its pieties are in the past. Once these aisles were filled with the power of faith, with prayer and pilgrimage, all heads bowed in reverence at the elevation of the Host. Once people knelt here, in God’s house, offering the future conduct of their lives against a promise of heaven. But now we no longer believe in promises. What was it that priest said? Camus, suicide, the only serious personal question. She looked at the side altar and saw the priest open the large ledger in front of him and turn to a blank page. She watched him pick up an old-fashioned straight-nibbed pen and write something on the page. Is he enter- . ing my visit in that book? A small transaction of God’s business. Debit or credit? I wonder which.
Outside a cold wind swept in an invisible puffball along the walls of the archbishop’s garden, scattering a cluster of pigeons as though dispersing a street demonstration. Mrs. Redden caught her blue sun hat, holding it on her head. The clock on the Pont au Double said it was almost eleven. She began to hurry. Rain fell.
•
“Worried?” he said. “Of course I was. I thought for a while you might have gone back to Ireland.”
“Without my suitcase?” She laughed. “You don’t know me.”
“Well, where did you go?”
“Oh, just for a walk. I’m sorry. You must be tired of sitting in all morning, waiting.”
“I am,” he said. “Let’s go out now. Okay?”
“Of course.”
As they went downstairs, she ran ahead of him, beginning to take the steps two at a time. He ran after her, turning the descent into a mock race, thinking that her mood was much better today. Perhaps he could bring it up at lunch.
“Which way will we go?” he asked.
“Depends on where you want to have lunch.”
“Is Restaurant des Arts, okay?”
“Perfect.”
Outside, the rain seemed to have stopped, but the sky was still gray, filled with shifting clouds. The winds whipped their bodies as they walked up the rue Danton.
“So, tell about this walk.”
“Oh, I went along the Seine as far as the Pont d’Austerlitz. And on my way back, I wound up in Notre-Dame.”
“What did you do, go to Mass or something?”
“I talked to a priest.”
Suddenly he felt uneasy. In Villefranche she had said she was no longer a practicing Catholic. But he had lived long enough in Ireland to be wary of such protestations of freedom. A priest sounded like bad news. “And how did that go?” he asked.
“He quoted Camus. It surprised me.”
“Camus on what? Religion?”
“No, on suicide.”
“What did Camus say about suicide?”
“That it’s perhaps the only important personal question.”
“Camus was overrated.”
“Do you think so?”
“Don’t you know the only important personal question?”
“What?”
“Us. How are you feeling today, by the way?”
“Better.”
“Feel up to talking?”
She shook her head.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t keep putting things off. But first I have to phone Kevin.”
A clochard in a filthy blue cotton smock thrust himself in front of them, holding out a grimed hand, pink palm upward. “Dis donc, tu veux me donner des sous, quoi?”
Tom Lowry turned from the urgent hand, the dust-smeared face, the dulled, angry eyes. “Come on,” he said and propelled her past the intrusion. But the clochard, running after them, muttering something unintelligible, pulled a wine bottle from under his smock and, staggering along a few paces to their rear, began to drink from it, red liquid, like watered blood, dribbling down his chin and neck. “Dis donc, toi?” Hurrying, they turned a corner, leaving him behind, coming out on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where, slackening pace, Tom put his arm around her waist. “Tell me,” he said. “If you phone your husband today, what will you say to him?”
“I don’t know. I promised to phone him, that’s all.”
“But if he asks you to come home, what will you say?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I can’t go back. Not now.”
“Then come to New York. Listen, I’ve worked it all out. I told you my charter leaves on the twenty-eighth. Well, yesterday, just on an impulse, I made a reservation for you on a TWA flight that leaves the same evening. It would get you into New York one hour after my flight arrives at Kennedy. I’d be waiting there for you. There’s no problem about a tourist visa. We’ll have plenty of time to get it. Usually, it seems, you can get it the same day you apply.”
She stared at him. “You’ve already booked a ticket for me?”
“Yes. You can always cancel it. I hope you won’t. Come with me. You don’t have to marry me.”
“I’m not going to marry you, don’t you worry,” she said, suddenly laughing.
“And if you get tired of the States—or of me—there’ll be a thousand dollars in your name in a New York bank account. And a return ticket. Is it a deal?”
“You really are a crazy Yank.”
“Say yes. It’s a no-strings-attached offer.”
“Well,” she said. “We seem to be having our talk after all.”
“It’s not so hard, is it?”
Abruptly she put her head down. “I must phone home. I must.”
“Okay, let’s find a phone.”
“No. You go and have a coffee and wait for me. There’s a P.T.T. up the street. I’ll join you in a minute.”
He kissed her. “Okay, I’ll be in that café over there.”
At the nearby Bureau de Postes, Téléphones et Télégraphes, the telephone room was in the basement. There an urgent collection of people, including African and Arab students, German and English tourists, waited to call on the long-distance circuit. Mrs. Redden gave her number to a blonde, pregnant telephonist who sat at a desk at the end of the room. The telephonist wrote the number in a school copybook in front of her and told Mrs. Redden to sit down. On a bench, between an old man who smelled of carbolic disinfectant and a black student whose cheekbones bore the gray scars of tribal initiation, she waited, watching the movement of people in and out of the telephone kiosks, until the telephonist suddenly pointed to her and cried, “Madame? Cabine Six!”
She went into the kiosk. The phone rang. “Parlez, Madame!” the telephonist’s voice cried when she picked up the receiver. Feeling like an actor in some foolish yet frigh
tening drama, she obeyed the shrill command and said automatically, “Hello? Hello?”
“Who’s that?” A woman’s voice, far off, an Irish accent.
“Is Dr. Redden in?”
“No. Who’s calling, please?”
“It’s Mrs. Redden. Who is that?”
“Oh, Mrs. Redden, is it you? I can hardly hear you. This is Maureen. Dr. Redden is at the hospital. He said if you called to give you this number. Are you ready?”
“Wait,” Mrs. Redden said, and then fumbled in her bag for her little address book, with its tiny pencil, the point almost worn to the wood. “All right, Maureen.”
“Four-five-four-seven-seven.”
“Four-five-four-seven-seven?”
“That’s right. How is Paris, Mrs. Redden?”
“Fine, Maureen. I’ll try that number now. Thank you.”
And left the kiosk, going across to the telephonist’s desk to queue, pay for her call, ask the telephonist to try the new number, and wait again on the bench beside two small Arab men who looked at her boldly, then eyed her legs with sidelong glances until the telephonist again signaled to her, crying, “Madame?” Again, in the booth, she picked up a ringing phone. “Parlez, Madame!”
“Hello.”
“City Hospital surgical unit,” a man’s voice said.
“This is Dr. Redden’s wife, calling from Paris. Is he there?”
“Hold on, Mrs. Redden, I’ll see if I can get him,” the voice said. And it was then, standing in a Paris telephone booth, the air heavy with the smell of stale tobacco smoke, that she faced the question at last. What would she say to him? What could she say to him?
“Hello, Sheila?” He sounded falsely cheerful.
“Kevin.”
“How are you? I’m glad to hear from you. I was hoping, maybe, you’d phone yesterday.”
“I said it would be a couple of days.”
“That’s right, I know you did. It’s just that I haven’t been able to sleep much at night, thinking of all this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t say that. I’m sure there’ve been mistakes on both sides. By the way, did you get that money I sent you?”