She did like it, all of it. The driving, the picknicking, the sightseeing; the frosted, forbidding Alps, the sunny checkerboard valleys, the rows of plane trees stretching out formally to infinity; this was what she had dreamed of, and even her husband became her lover once again in Paris. They stayed in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank, and every morning after coffee they would walk hand in hand up the Boulevard Raspail to stare at Rodin’s statute of Balzac. They would squeeze each other, and it was lovely, all of it, even the raw damp and the hungry hunts for cheap restaurants and the half-dead leafless trees in the Luxembourg Gardens and the endless plays that they sat through half-asleep, dazed with rhetoric and drunk with fatigue.
But then one day in the Orangerie they met a distinguished colleague of Burton’s, an older man serving as guest lecturer at the University of Bristol who had run over with his wife for a few days of shopping and picture-seeing. The wife, a most gracious silver-haired lady who did not look as if she had ever sold Luckies or Listerine in her father’s drugstore, expressed her envy of this young couple for their good fortune in living in a warm, sunny climate, and said pleasantly, “I suppose you’ve seen the paintings of Friesz in that charming little gallery in St. Tropez? He’s been sadly neglected, partly for political reasons, I think.”
Yes, Burton assured her, they had indeed seen Friesz’s charming landscapes; in fact, they had seen about everything that there was to look at along the Côte d’Azur. And then he went on to describe their life, not boastfully, or even cutely, not mentioning the sand painters and other international bums, nor even relating their daily existence to the immortal Twenties on the Riviera. What was wrong with the way that he spoke, then? It was, she thought, listening with a sense of growing desolation, that he was already projecting their common existence into the future, to the day when he too would be guest lecturer at the University of Bristol, when he too would run over to Paris with his wife for a week-end’s playgoing and shopping, when—worst of all—he would be able to look back with amusement from his comfortable rooms in the George V at the crummy quarters overlooking St. Germain-des-Prés in which they had spent a foolish youthful week, and at the impossibly uncomfortable villa in which they had spent the Fulbright year only because they had been young and silly and Victoria had been “dead game.”
Hearing herself described as a brave little soul who was making do without friends, central heating, or decent plumbing, Victoria turned her flushed countenance to the professor and his wife, dreading what must surely be found on their well-bred faces: the horrid recognition that Burton was a stuffed shirt. But no, they were too well-bred for that, if indeed they did recognize the truth; for all that was visible on their smooth pleasant countenances was mild concern for the hardships of these nice young people, and envy for their ability to have so much fun while still so young.
It was only after the eminent couple had bade them farewell and good luck that Burton saw that his wife was biting her lower lip jerkily.
Suddenly frightened, he asked, “Did I hurt your feelings?”
“My feelings! It wasn’t me you were insulting. It was yourself.”
“But don’t you see …” he began, and then stopped. “I guess I’m easier to live with when I’m working.”
After a while—too long, it seemed to them both—Victoria replied, “I wouldn’t say that.”
When they got back to their room late that night, Victoria kicked off her shoes and drew the grimy blind. Sitting on the edge of the noisy brass bed and listening to Burton gargling in their semiprivate bathroom, Victoria noticed for the first time the two lemon-shaped stains on the ancient wallpaper and a gnawed corner of the shag rug on which her feet were resting, that had evidently been worried by a dog until it had become unusable elsewhere and so had wound up here; and she knew that she could not stay another day in Paris.
But their encounter in the Orangerie had been working on Burton as well. Long-faced, hairy-legged, serious, vague-eyed without the glasses, he spoke to her around the towel with which he was patting his face.
“Vic, I’ve begun worrying about what’s still undone. You know I’m no fun to be with once I get like that.” He added frankly, “I suppose we could have squeezed another couple days out of Paris if we hadn’t bumped into old Roberts and his wife, but they started the gears grinding, and now I’m itching to get back to work. You wouldn’t be too furious, would you, if we—”
“I think we ought to settle up our bill and leave first thing in the morning,” Victoria said firmly, and quickly closed the bathroom door on Burton.
They drove south through the dead center of France, down through Lyons on the Route Nationale so as not to have to return again through Grenoble and that difficult road. But the change of scene made no difference. They barely mentioned to each other what they saw from the vibrating windows of the hard-working little car. Burton was already going over his three-by-five cards in his mind; his lips even moved a little as he drove. Victoria sat tensely waiting for the sun and solitude that lay in store for her in her village. The rainy season was over, the best lay ahead, and she ached for the healing hand of the sun as an invalid awaits the arrival of a trusted doctor.
The day after they unpacked, Burton went back to work. He was typing now for the most part, getting up a paper out of some of his researches, and he enjoyed working in the garden; so Victoria took to going out directly after breakfast and staying away, usually at a bench on the dusty Place, until lunch—sometimes, if there was food at home for Burton, for the entire day. Their positions were reversed, and Burton was comfortable in mind with the knowledge that his wife was in the fresh air, marketing, chatting, reading in the shade of the olive tree, perhaps even doing a little sketching.
But Victoria could not sketch with any degree of competence, and as the weeks drew by and the sun grew stronger, she felt her own spirit strengthening as well. Without quite knowing why at first, she began to pay more careful attention to her morning newspaper, and then to the magazines she bought and the books she borrowed from Françoise. These were all in French, because (or so she thought) the English books Burton had brought along bored her; but after a while she had to admit to herself that there must have been a more solid reason for starting in the first place, for taking the trouble to sit with a heavy dictionary in her lap, looking up idioms and marking them down as she read. I just want to show him, she thought, it’s childish but there it is. I want to prove that I can learn something too this year.
There was more to it than that, of course. One sunny spring afternoon she and Burton stopped at the vegetable stand to buy some North African oranges before driving on down to the beach. Burton had his nose in the Word Game of the Herald, and Victoria paid for the fruit and accepted it, wrapped in an old sheet of newspaper.
“My God,” the vegetable lady smiled, dropping the change into her hand, “but you have well learned the French this year. I think that you have learned better than Monsieur.”
Victoria felt her face turning red. She glanced quickly at Burton—but he was gnawing on his pencil, searching for one more five-letter word starting with e, and he barely raised his head.
“Yes, yes, yes,” the vegetable lady insisted as Victoria shook her head, “it is true. Monsieur speaks as he did when he arrived. But you knew nothing and now you speak with a better accent than he.”
Victoria muttered her goodbye and walked swiftly to the car. Could it really be true, or was it just French politeness? But no, what the woman had said was hardly polite to Burton.
She turned to her husband, who was digging in the pocket of his shorts for the ignition key. “You weren’t upset by what she said, were you?”
“Upset?”
“Annoyed, I mean. At her saying your French wasn’t improving.”
He laughed briefly—a little too briefly—before throwing the car into gear and swinging around. “Je m’en foue. After all, if I had to depend on the flattery of fishmongers and fruit peddlers, I’d be a pretty sad
specimen of a teacher, wouldn’t I? I’ve had a few more important things to do this year than covet their praise, you know.”
This extraordinary statement, with all that it implied not only about himself but about how he felt about her, hit Victoria with such force that she almost cried out, as if she had been lashed with a whip. She cranked down the window as they descended the bumpy hill to the plain below and allowed her face to be washed by the cool wind from the sea. When at last she dared to look across at her husband she was astonished to see that he was pouting.
In an instant her furious resentment at his cutting words was dissipated. He was not infuriating, he was simply comical, sitting there hunched over the wheel in his shorts that he insisted on wearing a little too long and waiting to be reassured that he was right and the vegetable lady was wrong. There was no need for her to lose control, no need to answer him in kind; in fact, if she really wanted to hurt him she had only to ignore his implied request for support, or to turn it down. But she had no desire to hurt him, she discovered, nor even the wish to assert herself or explain herself to him. She was simply not interested any longer in Burton, in his work, or in what he thought of her. This in itself was such a shocking realization that it made her feel weak and a little dizzy, and, in the moments that it took for them to reach the wind-scudded seacoast, happier and more lightheaded than she had ever been. So this, she thought, is why I’ve been working so hard all these long weeks on my French. And it struck her that just as a woman’s body will prepare her almost magically to experience the great physical and emotional events of her life, so her mind, deviously, almost furtively, will adjust and retrain itself—if it has any vitality at all and is more than an inert lump of matter—to prepare for new contingencies and unexpected vicissitudes.
“I think,” Burton panted, dragging blanket, pillows, oranges and books onto the pebbles, “that it’s still a little early for regular bathing. It’s so sheltered up at our house that we don’t even realize what a strong wind is blowing. It might even be dangerous to plunge in.”
“Oh, I don’t think so! I don’t think so at all!” Victoria pushed her hair into her cap and ran away from him to the green and white sea, blue farther out beyond swimming distance, but within range of the eye and the heart.
Within the week Burton asked his wife to make arrangements for the return voyage. “We’d best take care of it early,” he said, fingering his pipe. “When we have a firm date and the petty details are taken care of, we can relax and enjoy the last part of our year. I wouldn’t trouble you with all this, but it does take some of the household load off me, and you seem to have a talent for detail—for learning irregular verbs and such-like odd things.”
It was this last gratuitous remark that hardened Victoria’s spirit. He knew, then, what she had been doing while he had been collecting his little data and writing his little articles, and it rankled. Did he suspect the true reason for it? She thought not; and she said nothing to him, partly out of a lack of resolve that was not cowardice but a genuine apprehension that she could be doing wrong and that it was not too late for there to be a change.
But there was no change. She sold their car at a good price; she bought ship accommodations on the date which Burton requested, and at the scale which he had indicated; she went down and got the man to come up and read the gas and electric compteurs and paid his bill when it was presented; she assisted the gérante with the inventaire; she addressed labels until her arm ached and stickered them neatly on luggage and crates; she made a list of all purchases so that Burton would have no trouble clearing customs in New York. And then, the night before the ship was to sail, they sat out on the terrace smoking and saying goodbye to the French fireflies, and Victoria told her husband that she was not going back with him.
He looked at her petulantly, but seemed unable to see her clearly, for he took off his heavy glasses, blew on the lenses, and wiped them with the end of his sports shirt. “That’s a hell of a thing to joke about.”
“I’m not joking. Look in your passport case—I put the single ticket in there.”
Burton reached into his pocket and then stopped. “Say, what is all this? Are you planning on running off to Paris or Majorca with that idiot sand painter?”
“There isn’t anybody else.”
“No, I guess not. But why, Victoria? What’s happened?”
From the reasonable tone of his voice, Victoria could tell that it had not yet sunk in. He heard, but he didn’t believe—or if he did, it must have seemed to him like one of those family spats which could be patched up later as the sheets warmed or at worst could be laughed at in the clear morning air after the argument had been reduced to its proper dimensions.
She said coolly, “I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t have enough in common to stay together. It took me all year to decide, so please don’t think you can talk me out of it tonight. You can’t.”
“But…” Suddenly his face crumpled. He said jerkily, “I don’t understand. I really honest to God don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure that I do, either. I think maybe we both expected the wrong things from each other.”
Burton jumped up and lunged out with his foot, narrowly missing the cat, which leaped over the garden table to the wall. “If you’re serious about this crazy business, have you given any thought to me at all?” His voice rose. “How do you expect me to come home without you, as though you’d died or something, and face my family and your family and—and my colleagues, and our friends. …”
Victoria covered her face with her hands. She spoke through her palm. “That’s exactly why you’re going to have to. For asking a question like that without even thinking to ask what I’m going to do, how I’m going to get along, what I’m going to write to my family. For being concerned not with me, not even with us, but only with your piddling little career.”
“But supposing I hadn’t gotten the Fulbright. Supposing I hadn’t brought you here …”
“That’s why I’m not angry with you at all, Burton. That’s why I’m as grateful to you as I’ve ever been to anybody, for bringing me here and showing me what another kind of life could be like. You did more than that. You took the greatest gamble in the world—showing yourself to me against an entirely different background from what I am used to, and before I was so used to it that I was blind. Well, you lost.”
Burton blew his nose heavily, like a middle-aged man. “What are you going to tell your parents?”
“That I like it here, more than I like being with you. That I love it. That I’ve learned the language, after a fashion, and that I’m going to try to make a living here and a life here.”
He turned his back on her. After a moment he said, “I suppose you’re going to stay here, in the village. I suppose you’ve talked about the whole thing already with your gang.”
“No, I haven’t,” Victoria hesitated. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, maybe move to Nice and look for a job there working for Americans. Burton…”
“Yes?”
“I put the aspirine—you know, the ones in the little metal tube—in your trench coat pocket, in case you should need them tomorrow, what with all you’ll have to do before you’re settled in your cabin. I think you ought to try to get some sleep now—it’s going to be a rough day.”
“I want to tell you first that you’re not the only one who’s suffered. I may not have said anything about it all year, but I haven’t enjoyed it, your demeaning me and my work. It’s not much fun, having your wife look down her nose at you—if I talked in terms of what my work would buy, it was only because that seemed to interest you more than the work itself.”
Victoria stared at him.
“I hoped all that would change when we got back home. But I was wrong about that too, wasn’t I?” He turned and went inside without another word.
Victoria slept in the garden on a chair. From time to time she heard Burton moving around in the house behind her, and she knew that he
was not sleeping either, but she could not bring herself to join him as he stumbled about in the dark. She arose early, her back and legs aching from the unyielding chair in which she had lain as quietly as possible. She found that she was hungry, oddly enough, and almost unbearably tense.
When she entered the house Burton said, without looking at her, “I’d better start now. It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
She shook her head wordlessly.
“Well, I’d better start now to hunt up a cab, if I’m ever going to get one to come up here for our—for my stuff.”
“I’ve already taken care of that.” She glanced at her watch. “He’ll be along any minute—I told him yesterday it was a through ride to Cannes, to the Gare Maritime.”
Burton glanced up from the valise he was strapping. “You even arranged for that, didn’t you?”
For the first time, Victoria winced. “It was just another one of my chores.”
Outside, in the fresh air, there was a clear loud blast. Then it was repeated twice. “Listen,” Burton said hurriedly, “I don’t want you to go with me. Not to Cannes, not even to the corner—not if you don’t want to go all the way. Maybe you thought I’d carry you back bodily. I won’t. I’m not like that. But should I write you?”
“If you wish.”
“I’ll try to write about things besides my career. The kind of letters I might have written if we’d been separated before marriage instead of after.”
Victoria began to cry. “Goodbye, Burton.”
“Perhaps I’ll write and tell you next spring that I’m coming back, not on a Fulbright, but on my own. On my savings, or working my way across if I’m broke.”
NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN Page 17