Carol wondered, miserably, why they had come. For the first time, she noticed that all the people around them were odd and shabby. The smell of stale winter coats filled the unaired theatre; her head began to ache, and Martine’s violin shrilled on her ear like a penny whistle. At last the music stopped and the lights went on. The concert was over. There was some applause, but people were busy pulling on coats and screaming at one another from aisle to aisle. Martine shook hands with the conductor and, after looking vaguely around the hall, wandered away.
“Is this all?” said Howard. He stood up and stretched. Carol did not reply. She had just seen Felix and Odile together. Odile was speaking rapidly and looked unhappy. She wore the same skirt and pullover Carol had seen all winter, and she was carrying her coat.
“Odile!” Carol called. But Odile waved and threaded her way through the row of seats to the other side of the theatre, where she joined some elderly people and a young man. They went off together backstage.
Her family, Carol thought, sickening under the snub. And she didn’t introduce me, or even come over and speak. She was positive now that Odile had invited her only to help fill the hall, or because she had a pair of tickets she didn’t know what to do with.
“Let’s go,” Howard said. Their seats were near the front. By the time they reached the lobby, it was nearly empty. Under the indifferent eyes of the usher, Howard guided Carol into her coat. “They sure didn’t put on much of a show for Martine,” he said.
“No, they didn’t.”
“No flowers,” he said. “It didn’t even have her name on the program. No one would have known.”
It had grown dark, and rain poured from the edge of the roof in an unbroken sheet. “You stay here,” said Howard. “I’ll get a taxi.”
“No,” said Carol. “Stay with me. This won’t last.” She could not bring herself to tell him how hurt and humiliated she was, what a ruin the afternoon had been. Howard led her behind the shelter of a billboard.
“That dress,” he went on. “I thought you’d lent her something.”
“I had. She didn’t wear it. I don’t know why.”
“Ask Odile.”
“I don’t care. I’d rather let it drop.”
He agreed. He felt that Carol had almost knowingly exposed herself to an indignity over the dress, and pride of that nature he understood. To distract her, he spoke of the job waiting for him in Chicago, of his friends, of his brother’s sailboat.
Against a background of rain and Carol’s disappointment, he sounded, without meaning to, faintly homesick. Carol picked up his mood. She looked at the white feather hat the usher had made her remove and said suddenly, “I wish I were home. I wish I were in my own country, with my own friends.”
“You will be,” he said, “in a couple of months.” He hoped she would not begin to cry.
“I’m tired of the way everything is here—old and rotten and falling down.”
“You mean that chunk of ceiling?”
She turned from him, exasperated at his persistently missing the point, and saw Felix not far away. He was leaning against the ticket booth, looking resignedly at the rain. When he noticed Carol looking at him, he said, ignoring Howard, “Odile’s backstage with her family.” He made a face and went on, “No admission for us foreigners.”
Odile’s family did not accept Felix; Carol had barely absorbed this thought, which gave her an unexpected and indignant shock, when she realized what he had meant by “us foreigners.” It was rude of Odile to let her family hurt her friend; at the same time, it was even less kind of them to include Carol in a single category of foreigners. Surely Odile could see the difference between Carol and this pale young man who “did other things.” She felt that she and Felix had been linked together in a disagreeable way, and that she was floating away from everything familiar and safe. Without replying, she bent her head and turned away, politely but unmistakably.
“Funny kid,” Howard remarked as Felix walked slowly out into the rain, his hands in his pockets.
“He’s horrible,” said Carol, so violently that he stared at her. “He’s not funny. He’s a parasite. He lives on Odile. He doesn’t work or anything, he just hangs around and stares at people. Odile says he has no passport. Well, why doesn’t he get one? Any man can work if he wants to. Why are there people like that? All the boys I ever knew at home were well brought up and manly. I never knew anyone like Felix.”
She stopped, breathless, and Howard said, “Well, let Odile worry.”
“Odile!” Carol cried. “Odile must be crazy. What is she thinking of? Her family ought to put a stop to it. The whole thing is terrible. It’s bad for the office. It ought to be stopped. Why, he’ll never marry her! Why should he? He’s only a boy, an orphan. He needs friends, and connections, and somebody his own age. Why should he marry Odile? What does he want with an old maid from an old, broken-down family? He needs a good meal, and—and help.” She stopped, bewildered. She had been about to say “and love.”
Howard, now beyond surprise, felt only a growing wave of annoyance. He did not like hysterical women. His sisters never behaved like that.
“I want to go home,” said Carol, nearly wailing.
He ran off to find a taxi, glad to get away. By “home” he thought she meant the apartment she shared with the two American girls in Passy.
For Carol, the concert was the end, the final clou. She stopped caring about Paris, or Odile, or her feelings for Howard. When Odile returned her green dress, nicely pressed and folded in a cardboard box, she said only, “Just leave it on my desk.” Everyone seemed to think it normal that now her only preoccupation should be the cut of her wedding dress. People began giving parties for her. The wash of attention soothed her fears. She was good-tempered, and did not ask Howard to take her to tiresome places. Once again he felt he had made the right decision, and put her temporary waywardness down to nerves. After a while, Carol began lunching with Odile again, but she did not mention the concert.
As for Felix, Carol now avoided him entirely. Sometimes she waited until Odile had left the office before leaving herself. Again, she braced herself and walked briskly past him, ignoring his “Good evening.” She no longer stopped on the staircase to watch the twilight; her mood was different. She believed that something fortunate had happened to her spirit, and that she had become invulnerable. Soon she was able to walk by Felix without a tremor, and after a while she stopped noticing him at all.
· · ·
“Have you noticed winter is over?” Odile said. She and Carol had left the dressmaker’s street and turned off on a broad, oblique avenue. “It hasn’t rained for hours. This was the longest winter I remember, although I think one says this every year.”
“It was long for me, too,” Carol said. It was true that it was over. The spindly trees of the avenue were covered with green, like a wrapping of tissue. A few people sat out in front of shops, sunning themselves. It was, suddenly, like coming out of a tunnel.
Odile turned to Carol and smiled, a rare expression for her. “I’m sorry I was rude at Mme. Germaine’s just now,” she said. “I don’t know what the matter is nowadays—I am dreadful to everyone. But I shouldn’t have been to you.”
“Never mind,” said Carol. She flushed a little, for Howard had taught her to be embarrassed over anything as direct as an apology. “I’d forgotten it. In fact, I didn’t even notice.”
“Now you are being nice,” said Odile unhappily. “Really, there is something wrong with me. I worry all the time, over money, over Martine, over Felix. I think it isn’t healthy.” Carol murmured something comforting but indistinct. Glancing at her, Odile said, “Where are you off to now?”
“Nowhere. Home, I suppose. There’s always something to do these days.”
“Why don’t you come along with me?” Odile stopped on the street and took her arm. “I’m going to see Felix. He lives near here. Oh, he would be so surprised!”
“Felix?” Automatically Carol glan
ced at her watch. Surely she had something to do, some appointment? But Odile was hurrying her along. Carol thought, Now, this is all wrong. But they had reached the Boulevard de Grenelle, where the Métro ran overhead, encased in a tube of red brick. Light fell in patterns underneath; the boulevard was lined with ugly shops and dark, buff-painted cafés. It was a far cry from the prim street a block or so away where the dressmaker’s flat was. “Is it far?” said Carol nervously. She did not like the look of the neighborhood. Odile shook her head. They crossed the boulevard and a few crooked, narrow streets filled with curbside barrows and marketing crowds. It was a section of Paris Carol had not seen; although it was on the Left Bank, it was not pretty, not picturesque. There were no little restaurants, no students’ hotels. It was simply down-and-out and dirty, and everyone looked ill-tempered. Arabs lounging in doorways looked at the two girls and called out, laughing.
“Look straight ahead,” said Odile. “If you look at them, they come up and take your arm. It’s worse when I come alone.”
How dreadful of Felix to let Odile walk alone through streets like this, Carol thought.
“Here,” said Odile. She stopped in front of a building on which the painted word “Hôtel” was almost effaced. They climbed a musty-smelling staircase, Carol taking care not to let her skirt brush the walls. She wondered nervously what Howard would say when he heard she had visited Felix in his hotel room. On a stair landing, Odile knocked at one of the doors. Felix let them in. It took a few moments, for he had been asleep. He did not look at all surprised but with a slight bow invited them in, as if he frequently entertained in his room.
The room was so cluttered, the bed so untidy, that Carol stood bewildered, wondering where one could sit. Odile at once flung herself down on the bed, dropping her handbag on the floor, which was cement and gritty with dirt.
“I’m tired,” she said. “We’ve been choosing Carol’s wedding dress. White, and very pretty.”
Felix’s shirt was unbuttoned, his face without any color. He glanced sidelong at Carol, smiling. On a table stood an alcohol stove, some gaudy plastic bowls, and a paper container of sugar. In the tiny washbasin, over which hung a cold-water faucet, were a plate and a spoon, and, here and there on the perimeter, Felix’s shaving things and a battered toothbrush.
“Do sit on that chair,” he said to Carol, but he made no move to take away the shirt and sweater and raincoat that were bundled on it. Everything else he owned appeared to be on the floor. The room faced a court and was quite dark. “I’ll heat up this coffee,” Felix said, as if casting about for something to do as a host. “Miss Frazier, sit down.” He put a match to the stove and a blue flame leaped along the wall. He stared into a saucepan of coffee, sniffed it, and added a quantity of cold water. “A new PX has just been opened,” he said to Odile. He put the saucepan over the flame, apparently satisfied. “I went around to see what was up,” he said. “Nothing much. It is really sad. Everything is organized on such a big scale now that there is no room for little people like me. I waited outside and finally picked up some cigarettes—only two cartons—from a soldier.”
He talked on, and Carol, who was not accustomed to his conversation, could not tell if he was joking or serious. She had finally decided to sit down on top of the raincoat. She frowned at her hands, wondering why Odile didn’t teach him to make coffee properly and why he talked like a criminal. For Carol, the idea that one might not be permitted to work was preposterous. She harbored a rigid belief that anyone could work who sincerely wanted to. Picking apples, she thought vaguely, or down in a mine, where people were always needed.
Odile looked at Carol, as if she knew what she was thinking. “Poor Felix doesn’t belong in this world,” she said. “He should have been killed at the end of the war. Instead of that, every year he gets older. In a month, he will be twenty-two.”
But Odile was over thirty. Carol found the gap between their ages distasteful, and thought it indelicate of Odile to stress it. Felix, who had been ineffectively rinsing the plastic bowls in cold water, now poured the coffee out. He pushed one of the bowls toward Odile; then he suddenly took her hand and, turning it over, kissed the palm. “Why should I have been killed?” he said.
Carol, breathless with embarrassment, looked at the brick wall of the court. She twisted her fingers together until they hurt. How can they act like this in front of me, she thought, and in such a dirty room? The thought that they might be in love entered her head for the first time, and it made her ill. Felix, smiling, gave her a bowl of coffee, and she took it without meeting his eyes. He sat down on the bed beside Odile and said happily, “I’m glad you came. You both look beautiful.”
Carol glanced at Odile, thinking, Not beautiful, not by any stretch of good manners. “French girls are all attractive,” she said politely.
“Most of them are frights,” said Felix. No one disputed it, and no one but Carol appeared distressed by the abrupt termination of the conversation. She cast about for something to say, but Odile put her bowl on the floor, said again that she was tired, lay back, and seemed all at once to fall asleep.
Felix looked at her. “She really can shut out the world whenever she wants to,” he said, suggesting to Carol’s startled ears that he was quite accustomed to see her fall asleep. Of course, she might have guessed, but why should Felix make it so obvious? She felt ashamed of the way she had worried about Felix, and the way she had run after Odile, wanting to know her family. This was all it had come to, this dirty room. Howard was right, she thought. It doesn’t pay.
At the same time, she was perplexed at the intimacy in which she and Felix now found themselves. She would have been more at ease alone in a room with him than with Odile beside him asleep on his bed.
“I must go,” she said nervously.
“Oh, yes,” said Felix, not stopping her.
“But I can’t find my way back alone.” She felt as if she might cry.
“There are taxis,” he said vaguely. “But I can take you to the Métro, if you like.” He buttoned his shirt and looked around for a jacket, making no move to waken Odile.
“Should we leave her here?” said Carol. “Shouldn’t I say goodbye?”
He looked surprised. “I wouldn’t think of disturbing her,” he said. “If she’s asleep, then she must be tired.” And to this Carol could think of nothing to say.
He followed her down the staircase and into the street, dark now, with stripes of neon to mark the cafés. They said little, and because she was afraid of the dark and the Arabs, Carol walked close beside him. On the Boulevard de Grenelle, Felix stopped at the entrance to the Métro.
“Here,” he said. “Up those steps. It takes you right over to Passy.”
She looked at him, feeling this parting was not enough. She had criticized him to Howard and taught herself to ignore him, but here, in a neighborhood where she could not so much as find her way, she felt more than ever imprisoned in the walls of her shyness, unable to say “Thank you,” or “Thanks for the coffee,” or anything perfunctory and reasonable. She had an inexplicable and uneasy feeling that something had ended for her, and that she would never see Felix, or even Odile, again.
Felix caught her look, or seemed to. He looked around, distressed, at the Bar des Sportifs, and the sportifs inside it, and said, “If you would lend me a little money, I could buy you a drink before you go.”
His unabashed cadging restored her at once. “I haven’t time for a drink,” she said, all briskness now, as if he had with a little click dropped into the right slot. “But if you’ll promise to take Odile to dinner, I’ll lend you two thousand francs.”
“Fine,” said Felix. He watched her take the money from her purse, accepted it without embarrassment, and put it in the pocket of his jacket.
“Take her for a nice dinner somewhere,” Carol repeated.
“Of course.”
“Oh!” He exasperated her. “Why don’t you act like other people?” she cried. “You can’t live like this al
l the time. You could go to America. Mr. Mitchell would help you. I know he would. He’d vouch for you, for a visa, if I asked him to.”
“And Odile? Would Mr. Mitchell vouch for Odile too?”
She glanced at him, startled. When Felix was twenty-five, Odile would be nearly forty. Surely he had thought of this? “She could go, too,” she said, and added, “I suppose.”
“And what would we do in America?” He rocked back and forth on his heels, smiling.
“You could work,” she said sharply. She could not help adding, like a scold, “For once in your life.”
“As cook and butler,” said Felix thoughtfully, and began to laugh. “No, don’t be angry,” he said, putting out his hand. “One has to wait so long for American papers. I know, I used to do it. To sit there all day and wait, or stand in the queue—how could Odile do it? She has her job to attend to. She has to help her family.”
“In America,” said Carol, “she would make more money, she could help them even more.” But she could not see clearly the picture of Felix and Odile combining their salaries in a neat little apartment and faithfully remitting a portion to France. She could not imagine what on earth Felix would do for a living. Perhaps he and Odile would get married; something told her they would not. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s really your own business. I shouldn’t have said anything at all.” She moved away, but Felix took her hand and held it.
“You mean so well,” he said. “Odile is right, you know. I ought to have been killed, or at least disappeared. No one knows what to do with me or where I fit. As for Odile, her whole family is overdue. But we’re not—how does it go in American papers, under the photographs?—‘Happy Europeans find new life away from old cares.’ We’re not that, either.”
The 50s Page 78