The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

by Mavis Gallant

  “No, but I can see you in the diary of a hysterical English girl,” said Simone, and she told him about Cassandra.

  Roger, scarcely listening, went on, “In a novel, Katia’s visit would be a real-estate tour. She would drive up from Biarritz with her mother and take pictures from the road. Katia’s mother would find the house squat and suburban, and so Luc would show them Cousin Henri’s. They would take pictures of that, too. Luc would now be going round with chalk and a tape measure, marking the furniture he wants to sell once we’re buried, planning the rooms he will build for Katia when the place is his.”

  All at once he felt the thrust of the next generation, and for the first time he shared some of Simone’s fear of the unknown girl.

  “The house is yours,” said Simone, mistaking his meaning. “The furniture is mine. They can’t change that by going round with a piece of chalk. There’s always the bank. She can’t find that suburban.” The bank had recently acquired a new and unexpected advantage: It was too small to be nationalized. “Your son is a dreamer,” said Simone. “He dreams he is studying, and he fails his exams. He dreams about sex and revolutions, and he waits around for letters and listens to old men telling silly tales.”

  Roger remembered the hole drilled in the wall. An au-pair girl in the shower was Luc’s symbol of sexual mystery. From the great courtesans of his grandfather’s time to the prettiest children of the poor in bordellos to a girl glimpsed as she stood drying herself—what a decline! Here was the true comedown, the real debasement of the middle class. Perhaps he would write a book about it; it would at least rival Mr. Brunt’s opus about the decline of French officers.

  “She can’t spell,” said Simone, examining the letter again. “If Luc marries her, he will have to write all her invitations and her postcards.” What else did women write? She paused, wondering.

  “Her journal?” Roger said.

  In Cassandra’s journal Simone read, “They expect such a lot from that poor clod of a Luc.” That night at dinner Simone remarked, “My father once said he could die happy. He had never entertained a foreigner or shaken hands with an Englishman.”

  Cassandra stared at Roger as if to say, “Is she joking?” Roger, married twenty-three years, thought she was not. Cassandra’s pale hair swung down as she drooped over her plate. She began to pick at something that, according to her diary, made her sick: underdone lamb, cooked the French way, stinking of garlic and spilling blood.

  At dawn there was a spring thunderstorm, like the start of civil war. The gunfire died, and a hard, steady rain soaked the tennis court and lawn. Roger got up, first in the household, and let the dog out of the garage, where it slept among piles of paperbacks and rusting cans of weed killer. Roger was forty-eight that day; he hoped no one would notice. He thought he saw yellow roses running along the hedge, but it was a shaft of sunlight. In the kitchen, he found a pot with the remains of last night’s coffee and heated some in a saucepan. While he drank, standing, looking out the window, the sky cleared entirely and became soft and blue.

  “Happy birthday.”

  He turned his head, and there was Cassandra in the doorway, wearing a long gypsy skirt and an embroidered nightshirt, with toy rings on every finger. “I thought I’d dress because of Sunday,” she explained. “I thought we might be going to church.”

  “I could offer you better coffee in the village,” said Roger. “If you do not mind the walk.” He imagined her diary entry: “The Baron tried to get me alone on a country road, miles from any sign of habitation.”

  “The dog will come, too,” he assured her.

  They walked on the rim of wet fields, in which the freed dog leaped. The hem of Cassandra’s skirt showed dark where it brushed against drenched grasses. Roger told her that the fields and woods, almost all they could see, had belonged to his grandparents. Cousin Henri owned the land now.

  Cassandra knew; when Simone was not talking about Luc and Katia and the government, she talked about Cousin Henri.

  “My father wants to write another book, about Torquemada and Stalin and, I think, Cromwell,” Cassandra said. “The theme would be single-mindedness. But he can’t get down to it. My mother doesn’t see why he can’t write for an hour, then talk to her for an hour. She asks him to help look for things she’s lost, like the keys to the car. Before he retired, she was never bored. Now that he’s home all day, she wants company and she loses everything.”

  “How did he write his other books?” said Roger.

  “In the minstrel he had a private office and secretary. Two, in fact. He expected to write even more, once he was free, but he obviously won’t. If he were alone, I could look after him.” That was unexpected. Perhaps Luc knew just how unexpected Cassandra could be, and that was why he stayed away from her. “I don’t mean I imagine my mother not there,” she said. “I only meant that I could look after him, if I had to.”

  Half a mile before the village stood Cousin Henri’s house. Roger told Cassandra why he and Henri were not speaking, except through lawyers. Henri had been grossly favored by their mutual grandparents, thanks to the trickery of an aunt by marriage, who was Henri’s godmother. The aunt, who was very rich as well as mad and childless, had acquired the grandparents’ domain, in their lifetime, by offering more money than it was worth. She had done this wicked thing in order to hand it over, intact, unshared, undivided, to Henri, whom she worshiped. The transaction had been brought off on the wrong side of the law, thanks to a clan of Protestants and Freemasons.

  Cassandra looked puzzled and pained. “You see, the government of that time …,” said Roger, but he fell silent, seeing that Cassandra had stopped understanding. When he was overwrought he sounded like his wife. It was hardly surprising: He was simply repeating, word for word, everything Simone had been saying since they were married. In his own voice, which was ironic and diffident, he told Cassandra why Cousin Henri had never married. At the age of twenty Henri had been made trustee of a family secret. Henri’s mother was illegitimate—at any rate, hatched from a cuckoo’s egg. Henri’s father was not his mother’s husband but a country neighbor. Henri had been warned never to marry any of the such-and-such girls, because he might be marrying his own half sister. Henri might not have wanted to: The such-and-suches were ugly and poor. He had used the secret as good reason not to marry anyone, had settled down in the handsomest house in the Yonne (half of which should have been Roger’s), and had peopled the neighborhood with his random children.

  They slowed walking, and Cassandra looked at a brick-and-stucco box, and some dirty-faced children playing on the steps.

  “There, behind the farmhouse,” said Roger, showing a dark, severe manor house at the top of a straight drive.

  “It looks more like a monastery, don’t you think?” said Cassandra. Although Roger seemed to be waiting, she could think of nothing more to say. They walked on, toward Cassandra’s breakfast.

  On the road back, Roger neither looked at Cousin Henri’s house nor mentioned it. They were still at some distance from home when they began to hear Simone: “Marry her! Marry Katia! Live with Katia! I don’t care what you do. Anything, anything, so long as you pass your exam.” Roger pushed open the gate and there was Simone, still in her dressing gown, standing on a lawn strewn with Luc’s clothes, and Luc at the window, still in pajamas. Luc heaved a chair over the sill, then a couple of pillows and a whole armful of books. Having yelled something vile about the family (they were in disagreement later about what it was), he jumped out, too, and landed easily in a flower bed. He paused to pick up shoes he had flung out earlier, ran awkwardly across the lawn, pushed through a gap in the hedge, and vanished.

  “He’ll be back,” said Simone, gathering books. “He’ll want his breakfast. He really is a remarkable athlete. With proper guidance, Luc could have done anything. But Roger never took much interest.”

  “What was that last thing he said?” said Cassandra.

  “Fools,” said Simone. “But a common word for it. Never
repeat that word, if you want people to think well of you.”

  “Spies,” Roger had heard. In Luc’s room he found a pair of sunglasses on the floor. He had noticed Luc limping as he made for the hedge; perhaps he had sprained an ankle. He remembered how Luc had been too tired to walk a dog, too worn out to feed a goldfish. Roger imagined him, now, wandering in muddy farmyards, in shoes and pajamas, children giggling at him—the Clairevoies’ mooncalf son. Perhaps he had gone to tell his troubles to that other eccentric, Cousin Henri.

  Tears came easily since Roger’s last attack. He had been told they were caused by the depressant effect of the pills he had to take. He leaned on the window frame, in the hope of seeing Luc, and wept quietly in the shelter of Luc’s glasses.

  “It’s awfully curious of me,” said Cassandra, helping Simone, “but what’s got into Luc? When he stayed with us, in England, he was angelic. Your husband seems upset, too.”

  “The Baron,” said Simone, letting it be known she had read the diary and was ready for combat, “the Baron is too sensible. Today is his birthday. He is forty-eight—nearly fifty.”

  Roger supposed she meant “sensitive.” To correct Simone might create a diversion, but he could not be sure of what kind. To let it stand might bewilder the English girl; but, then, Cassandra was born bewildered.

  Luc came home in time for dinner, dressed in a shirt and corduroys belonging to Cousin Henri. His silence, Roger thought, challenged them for questions; none came. He accepted a portion of Roger’s birthday cake, which, of course, Roger could not touch, and left half on his plate. “Even as a small child, Luc never cared for chocolate,” Simone explained to Cassandra.

  The next day, only food favored by Luc was served. Simone turned over a letter from Katia. It was brief and cool in tone: Katia had been exercising horses in a riding school, helping a friend.

  The Clairevoies, preceded by Luc on the Honda, packed up and drove back to Paris. This time Cassandra was allowed to sit in front, next to Simone. Roger and the dog shared the backseat with Luc’s books and a number of parcels.

  They saw Cassandra off at the Gare du Nord. Roger was careful not to take her arm, brush against her, or otherwise inspire a mention in her diary. She wore a T-shirt decorated with a grinning mouth. “It’s been really lovely,” she said. Roger bowed.

  Her letter of thanks arrived promptly. She was planning to help her father with his book on Stalin, Cromwell, and Torquemada. He wanted to include a woman on the list, to bring the work in line with trends of the day. Cassandra had suggested Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. Boadicea stood for feminine rectitude, firmness, and true love of one’s native culture. So Cassandra felt.

  “Cassandra has written a most learned and affectionate letter,” said Simone, who would never have to see Cassandra again. “I only hope Luc was as polite to the Brunts.” Her voice held a new tone of maternal grievance and maternal threat.

  Luc, who no longer found threats alarming, packed his books and took the train for Rennes. Katia’s letters seemed to have stopped. Searching Luc’s room, Simone found nothing to read except a paperback on private ownership. “I believe he is taking an interest in things,” she told Roger.

  It was late in May when the Clairevoies made their final trip to Rennes. Suspecting what awaited them, Simone wore mourning—a dark linen suit, black sandals, sunglasses. Father Rousseau had on a dark suit and black tie. After some hesitation he said what Roger was waiting to hear: It was useless to make Luc sit for an examination he had not even a remote chance of passing. Luc was unprepared, now and forever. He had, in fact, disappeared, though he had promised to come back once the talk with his parents was over. Luc had confided that he would be content to live like Cousin Henri, without a degree to his name, and with a reliable tenant farmer to keep things running.

  My son is a fool, said Roger to himself. Katia, who was certainly beautiful, perhaps even clever, loved him. She stood crying in the street, trying to see a light in his room.

  “Luc’s cousin is rich,” said Simone. “Luc is too pure to understand the difference. He will have to learn something. What about computer training?”

  “Luc has a mind too fluid to be restrained,” said Father Rousseau.

  “Literature?” said Simone, bringing up the last resort.

  Roger came to life. “Sorting letters in the post office?”

  “Machines do that,” said Father Rousseau. “Luc would have to pass a test to show he understands the machine. I have been wondering if there might be in Luc’s close environment a family affair.” The Clairevoies fell silent. “A family business,” Father Rousseau repeated. “Families are open, airy structures. They take in the dreamy as well as the alert. There is always an extra corner somewhere.”

  Like most of her women friends, Simone had given up wearing jewelry: The streets were full of anarchists and muggers. One of her friends knew of someone who had had a string of pearls ripped off her neck by a bearded intellectual of the Mediterranean type—that is, quite dark. Simone still kept, for luck, a pair of gold earrings, so large and heavy they looked fake. She touched her talisman earrings and said, “We have in our family a bank too small to be nationalized.”

  “Congratulations,” said Father Rousseau, sincerely. When he got up to see them to the door, Roger saw he wore running shoes.

  It fell to Roger to tell Luc what was to become of him. After military service of the most humdrum and unprotected kind, he would move to a provincial town and learn about banks. The conversation took place late one night in Luc’s room. Simone had persuaded Roger that Luc needed to be among his own things—the galleon lamp, the Foreign Legion recruiting poster that had replaced Che Guevara, the photograph of Simone that replaced Roger’s graduating class. Roger said, somewhat shyly, “You will be that much closer to Biarritz.”

  “Katia is getting married,” said Luc. “His father has a riding school.” He said this looking away, rolling a pencil between thumb and fìnger, something like the way his mother had rolled a kitchen match. Reflected in the dark window, Luc’s cheeks were hollowed, his eyes blazing and black. He looked almost a hero and, like most heroes, lonely.

  “What happened to your friends?” said Roger. “The friends you used to see every Sunday.”

  “Oh, that … that fell apart. All the people they ever talked about were already dead. And some of the parents were worried. You were the only parents who never interfered.”

  “We wanted you to live your own life,” said Roger. “It must have been that. Could you get her back?”

  “You can do anything with a woman if you give her enough money.”

  “Who told you a thing like that?” In the window Roger examined the reflected lamp, the very sight of which was supposed to have made a man of Luc.

  “Everyone. Cousin Henri. I told her we owned a bank, because Cousin Henri said it would be a good thing to tell her. She asked me how to go about getting a bank loan. That was all.”

  Does he really believe he owns a bank, Roger wondered. “About money,” he said. “Nothing of Cousin Henri’s is likely to be ours. Illegitimate children are allowed to inherit now, and my cousin,” said Roger with some wonder, “has acknowledged everyone. I pity the schoolteacher. All she ever sees is the same face.” This was not what Luc was waiting to hear. “You will inherit everything your mother owns. I have to share with my cousin, because that is how our grandparents arranged it.” He did not go on about the Freemasons and Protestants, because Luc already knew.

  “It isn’t fair,” said Luc.

  “Then you and your mother share my share.”

  “How much of yours is mine?” said Luc politely.

  “Oh, something at least the size of the tennis court,” said Roger.

  On Luc’s desk stood, silver-framed, another picture of Simone, a charming one taken at the time of her engagement. She wore, already, the gold earrings. Her hair was in the upswept balloon style of the time. Her expression was smiling, confident but untried. Both Luc and Rog
er suddenly looked at it in silence.

  It was Simone’s belief that, after Katia, Luc had started sleeping with one of her own friends. She thought she knew the one: the Hungarian wife of an architect, fond of saying she wished she had a daughter the right age for Luc. This was a direct sexual compliment, based on experience, Simone thought. Roger thought it meant nothing at all. It was the kind of empty declaration mothers mistook for appreciation. Simone had asked Roger to find out what he could, for this was the last chance either of them would ever have to talk to Luc. From now on, he would undoubtedly get along better with his parents, but where there had been a fence there would be a wall. Luc was on his own.

  Roger said, “It was often thought, in my day, mainly by foreigners who had never been to France, that young men began their lives with their mother’s best friend. Absurd, when you consider it. Why pick an old woman when you can have a young one?” “Buy a young one,” he had been about to say, by mistake. “Your mother’s friends often seem young to me. I suppose it has to do with their clothes—so loose, unbuttoned. The disorder is already there. My mother’s best friends wore armor. It was called the New Look, invented by Christian Dior, a great defender of matronly virtue.” A direct glance from Luc—the first. “There really was a Mr. Dior, just as I suppose there was a Mr. Mercedes and a Mr. Benz. My mother and her friends were put into boned corsets, stiff petticoats, wide-brimmed, murderous hats. Their nails were pointed, and as red as your lampshade. They carried furled parasols with silver handles and metal-edged handbags. Even the heels of their shoes were contrived for braining people. No young man would have gone anywhere near.” Luc’s eyes met Roger’s in the window. “I have often wondered,” said Roger, “though I’m not trying to make it my business, what you and Katia could have done. Where could you have taken her? Well, unless she had some private place of her own. There’s more and more of that. Daughters of nice couples, people we know. Their own apartment, car, money. Holidays no one knows where. Credit cards, bank accounts, abortions. In my day, we had a miserable amount of spending money, but we had the girls in the Rue Spontini. Long after the bordellos were closed, there was the Rue Spontini. Do you know who first took me there? Cousin Henri. Not surprising, considering the life he has led since. Henri called it ‘the annex,’ because he ran into so many friends from his school. On Thursday afternoons, that was.” A slight question in Luc’s eyes. “Thursday was our weekly holiday, like Wednesdays for you. I don’t suppose every Wednesday—no, I’m sure you don’t. Besides, even the last of those places vanished years ago. There were Belgian girls, Spanish girls from Algeria. Some were so young—oh, very young. One told me I was like a brother. I asked Cousin Henri what she meant. He said he didn’t know.”