“My mother never said anything to me,” he said eventually. “I always had the impression that my parents were very happy together. They had a good marriage, never a cross word, and they laughed a lot.”
Max nodded. “I’m sure they did. In life you can experience many different kinds of love, and I’m sure that your mother’s heart was big enough to make several people happy. Your father was an enviable man, Robert.”
“But what about the story then? When did you give her the story?” asked Rosalie.
“Oh yes, my little story—by the way, it was the first I ever wrote. I gave it to her on one of our last days when we’d gone to the parc de Bagatelle for a picnic. It was a glorious day, the air still smelled of rain, and we’d just gotten quite wet because there had been a short summer storm. But the sun quickly dried our clothes.”
Max still clearly remembered how they’d lain on a plaid rug on the grass. Under an old tree on a little hill not far from the Grotto of the Four Winds. Ruth had found the spot and said that it was perfect for a picnic.
“Ruth had an instant camera—they were all the rage at the time—and I took a photo of her which she gave me afterwards. I think I still have it.”
“Yes, you do. I think I saw it in the box,” interjected Rosalie.
“That afternoon I gave her the story of the blue tiger,” Max continued. “I’d had the original bound and kept a carbon copy for myself. The original title page had the words: ‘For Ruth, whom I’ll never forget.’ But then I thought that that dedication was very revealing, and so I changed the title page and just wrote, ‘For R.’” Max rubbed his beard in embarrassment as he looked over at Rosalie. “But that then led to a number of misunderstandings.”
He saw that Rosalie was smiling and hoped that she had forgiven him for the little lie his vanity had made him tell. Of course he hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d had to go back to an old story because he didn’t have a new idea. And more than that, he had felt flattered because she was so delighted when she thought the dedication was meant for her.
“But if it had been a new story I would of course have been glad to dedicate it to you, my dear Rosalie. I also have something to confess to you.”
“Yes?” she asked.
“The way you smile immediately reminded me of Ruth.”
“Really?” She laughed.
Robert was squirming uncomfortably on his cushion and it wasn’t hard to see that something was still bothering him.
“So the story that my mother used to tell me is really about you and her?”
Max nodded. “Of course only those who are in the know would recognize that. Ruth was Héloïse, the little girl with the golden hair who believes in her tiger—the cloud-tiger.” He smiled. “And I was the tiger. She sometimes used to call me mon petit tigre; I really liked that.”
“And the land that is so far away that you can’t get there by airplane, but only by longing—,” began Robert.
“—was our land.” Max completed the sentence. “I hoped that this way Ruth would never forget me, and I see now that she never did.” He nodded, and there was a strange gleam in his eye. What he did not say, however, was that the flight over Paris by night also had a deeper meaning.
One night they had flown. One magic, exhilarating, fairy-tale night that would have to be enough for a whole life, a night where they parted, intoxicated with love, in a dawn that already contained the bitter taste of separation.
She had kept her promise. A hesitant smile crossed his face. “I hope, Robert, you won’t be angry with me if I’m glad that Ruth didn’t forget me. Just as I am of course glad to meet her son. Your mother meant a great deal to me.”
“Can I see the photo? The one of my mother, I mean.”
“Of course. If Rosalie would be so kind as to get the box down from my wardrobe? I’m not really in a fit state for climbs like that.”
While Rosalie got up and went upstairs to the bedroom, Max gazed sympathetically at the young man who had intertwined his hands and kept stretching his fingers and pressing them against the backs of his hands. It was definitely not easy to have the past sprung on him like this. And more than that, a past on which he had had no influence at all.
“Why did she never tell me?” he said finally. “I wasn’t a child anymore, and it was all so long ago. I would have understood.”
“Don’t brood too much, my boy. Your mother surely did the right thing, I just know that. She was a wonderful woman—even then—and she must have loved you very dearly. Otherwise you wouldn’t be the person you are today.”
Robert nodded gratefully. “Yes, perhaps you’re right,” he said, and his expression brightened.
A few moments later, Rosalie came back down.
“Is this it?” She put the faded color photograph of a young woman on the table, and both men leaned over it.
“Yes,” said Max. “That’s the photo from the parc de Bagatelle.”
Robert pulled the photo nearer and nodded.
“Yes,” he too then said. “That’s Mom, no mistaking her.” He looked at the young woman standing under a tree and laughing into the camera. “My goodness, that laugh,” he said, wiping his eyes. “She never lost that laugh.”
The sun was already going down when Max Marchais’s guests departed. Robert had expressed a desire to see the place where the picture of his mother had been taken, and so they’d agreed that they’d all go to the bois de Boulogne together the next day.
“Finding the tree is not the problem,” Max had explained. “I just hope I can get there with these stupid things.” He pointed to his crutches.
“Oh go on, you can do it! If necessary we can push you there, I’m sure they rent out wheelchairs,” Rosalie had said, and the laughter that followed was very liberating.
Then they had driven off in Rosalie’s little car. Max had stood in the doorway a while longer, looking out after them. Life went on. It kept on going. A flame that was passed on by an endless team of runners until it reached its destination.
He hobbled back to the terrace and sat back down in his wicker chair. The cool of the evening descended on the garden. Deep in thought, Max looked at the faded photo that was still lying on the table.
He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes for a moment. He saw two young people, full of the joys of summer, on a sunny day in the bois de Boulogne. They were stretched out under an old chestnut tree on a checkered woolen rug, joking with each other. The rug was scratchy, but only a little. Ruth was wearing her red dress with the white polka dots that he liked so much and her laughing mouth was almost as red as her dress. The light fell through the trees, casting tiny shimmering whirls on the rug and her bare legs. She had taken off her sandals. A bird chirped. The sky was bluer than blue. A white cloud drifted lazily by.
It had been a glorious summer day, and it was hard to imagine that it could ever end, it was so perfect. You could almost grasp the joie de vivre that filled the air with your hand. And suddenly Max felt his heart becoming light. So light that it could fly.
He opened his eyes and felt a long-forgotten love of life reviving in him. Yes, he loved this life, which was sometimes so much and sometimes less than nothing. But it was all there was.
He picked up the photo. Then he turned it over and looked at the note penciled on the back:
Bois de Boulogne, 22nd July, 1974
For a long time he just sat there, staring into the twilight. And a thought that had touched him that afternoon as gently as a young woman’s hand suddenly became overpowering.
Twenty-eight
“Did you have to kick my shin like that?” asked Robert, as they drove along the narrow lane leading away from the old villa. “Is that the elegant touch you’re always talking about?” He raised his pant leg to examine a bruise of considerable proportions.
“I thought an American feels no pain,” replied Rosalie.
“An Indian, an Indian,” corrected Robert. “I’m just another sniveling Yankee.”
/> “Anyway, that was the only way to stop you. All I wanted to do was make sure you didn’t beat each other’s brains out.” Rosalie smiled. She suddenly found the familiar tu tripping easily from her lips. While they were clearing the dishes together and carrying them into the kitchen, they had both moved to the familiar form without much ado. After that crucial afternoon, after everything they’d been through together, it would have been strange to continue using the formal vous.
Robert grinned. “Your Max Marchais isn’t so bad after all. In fact he’s actually quite nice. Though it’s quite strange to suddenly come across an old man who … well … who was once in love with your own mother.” He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“Even more when your own mother never said a word about it,” added Rosalie. “On the other hand, she was already engaged to Paul of course; perhaps it was just a bit awkward for her. Or the whole thing just felt unreal when she was back in America in her familiar surroundings.”
“So unreal that she later told me the story he’d written for her every evening?”
“Well, that’s really kind of romantic. I mean, most people would ultimately like to look back at such an unusual story. And perhaps the special magic was due to the fact that their love was never fulfilled. And anyway The Blue Tiger is simply a very good story. At least, it moved me deeply when I first read it. Even if I didn’t know the secret behind it. And even if the whole thing must have been very sad for Max back then—in a way he started writing because of your mother. Writing proper stories, I mean. You could say that Ruth was his muse.” She glanced quickly at Robert. “Max has written a lot of other great books. You ought to read them. I used to devour them when I was a child.”
“Hmm,” said Robert. His eyes were half shut. Either he was too tired to answer, or he was lost in his own thoughts. At any rate he suddenly seemed to be far away, and Rosalie decided not to disturb him.
As she steered the car into the Nanterre tunnel, she could feel the last traces of tension vanishing.
She was glad, and relieved that the meeting between the two men had run so smoothly, which was by no means a foregone conclusion. Thank heaven the whole business had ended up being very friendly. After their first heated exchange, Max, who had been deeply moved by his memories and the sad fact that Ruth was already dead, had been genuinely glad to meet Ruth’s son. As they left, he had hugged them both.
Rosalie had to admit that it would have made her sad, too, if Max and Robert could not stand each other. After all, she realized with surprise, they were both dear to her heart.
She signaled a turn, pulled out onto the expressway, and thought with horror of the hostile atmosphere that had prevailed at first. How the two of them had sat facing each other and accused each other—with anger in their faces and sparks in their eyes—of French arrogance and American ignorance! For a moment she’d actually thought that an outraged Max would throw them out before anything had been cleared up. But at the end of the day she had gained the impression that mutual concern and sympathetic candor was what had finally brought Max and Robert closer. Otherwise Robert surely would not have suggested that they meet the next day.
She was excited at the thought of their trip to the bois de Boulogne, where they would follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Sherman—or rather, of Miss Ruth Trudeau—who linked these two so very different men in a fateful way.
She looked over at Robert again as he sat silently beside her. These night drives with the “Shakespeare Professor” were gradually becoming a pleasant habit. But this time there was no uncomfortable silence separating them: this silence was companionable and a little exhausted.
All their misunderstandings and disputes, all the mysteries and speculations had led to that afternoon in the villa of an aging children’s writer, who had told them his story. The story of a long-ago love that produced both joy and great sadness.
Rosalie leaned back on the headrest of the car and rolled her head back and forth. The car traveled through the darkness with a regular hum. As the cold lights of the tunnel flashed past her at regular intervals, blinding her for fractions of a second, she reviewed The Blue Tiger in her mind, trying to find further clues in the individual sentences. Although she had illustrated the book herself and knew it almost by heart, she would never have hit upon the idea that the heroes of the fairy-tale fable were in reality two lovers who should not have come together and who were left in the end with only longing—and memory.
She drove out of the tunnel and soon afterward reached the traffic circle that led onto the Champs-Élysées. She merged with the traffic and saw the black obelisk on the Place de la Concorde sticking up into the sky at the end of the broad avenue like a warning finger.
The search was at an end, the problem solved. But how would it continue? Would it continue at all? Rosalie caught herself wondering if the following day would also mean the end of their story.
At a red light she looked over at Robert, who had now opened his eyes again and was looking pensively out of the window, and studied his expression carefully. What could be going through his mind? The truth about his mother must have churned him up. Rosalie saw him frown and continuously tense his jaw. She would have liked to take him in her arms. She would have liked to say something that was appropriate to the situation, but unfortunately she couldn’t think of anything.
“It’s strange, the things that can happen in life, isn’t it?” she finally said. “It must be funny for you.” Without thinking, she took his hand and squeezed it.
“It’s okay—it’s not all that bad,” he replied, holding her hand in his. It felt firm and warm. Like his kiss that time in the garden. “It’s not bad at all, just … different,” he continued. “It casts a new light on so many things.” His fingers wrapped around hers as if their hands had discovered a language of their own. “Now it seems to me almost as if my mother wanted to give me a clue—with the story of the blue tiger and what she always said about Paris.”
“And what did your mother say about Paris?”
“That it’s a good idea?” He couldn’t help grinning.
“You can leave out the question mark,” replied Rosalie with a smile. “You know how it is: Paris is always a good idea.” Regretfully, she took her hand away and changed down into second gear as she turned off the boulevard Saint-Germain onto a little side street, peering searchingly though the window. “That is, unless you need somewhere to park.”
* * *
THIS TIME ROSALIE HAD not dropped him at the hotel. After she had succeeded, contrary to his prognosis, in squeezing the car into such a tiny space that there was not an inch of room left—naturally not without touching the cars in front and behind several times as she did so (“but why else do we have bumpers?” she had asked in astonishment)—they had gotten out of the car and he’d accompanied her to the rue du Dragon. Behind the door of the store they heard William Morris give a short bark and then whimper with delight.
“Would you like to come up for a glass of wine?” Rosalie asked as she unlocked the door. She tried to make it sound as casual as possible. “Or are you afraid of my little dog?”
Robert shook his head. “No, no. William Morris and I are the best of friends now.” He twisted his mouth into a wry smile. “And what about your personal bodyguard? I don’t want him to challenge me to a fistfight again.”
René! Rosalie felt herself going red and hoped that it couldn’t be seen in the weak street lighting. In all the excitement she had forgotten to think about her boyfriend, though he—fortunately, as she immediately realized—was no longer her boyfriend.
She smiled like a sphinx. “My personal bodyguard has apparently found a long-distance runner in San Diego and prefers to guard her now,” she replied curtly.
“Oh … what?!” Robert raised his eyebrows and smiled like the cat that’s got the cream. “How did that happen?”
She left him without answering and he followed her up the spiral staircase to her little apartment. Upstairs he l
ooked around curiously and stood for a moment by the big table to look at a couple of drawings that were lying there.
“Take a seat.” She switched on the floor lamp and pointed to the armchair beside her bed. “I’ll get us some wine from the kitchen.” She took off her sandals, and he dropped his shoulder bag on the chair and wandered around the room, finally stopping in front of the framed photograph of her father that hung on the wall behind her desk.
“Your father?” he asked. She nodded.
“You can see that right away.” He studied the photo. “The brown hair, the prominent eyebrows, the wide mouth. I like the look of him.” Robert turned round toward her and ran his hand through his hair. “I take more after my mother.”
“Of course.” Rosalie smiled. “The golden hair!” The faded color photo of Ruth shot into her mind. Then she made an advance. “And who do you get those incredibly blue eyes from?”
“Oh, thanks a lot.” He grinned and tried to conceal his embarrassment with a joke. “A historic moment!”
“In what way?”
“I think that’s the first compliment I’ve ever received from a certain Rosalie Laurent.”
“Could that be because a certain Robert Sherman hasn’t so far given me much cause to compliment him?” she riposted. “But I bet you don’t suffer from a shortage of compliments. I’m surely not the first woman to have noticed your blue eyes.” She still remembered clearly how he’d stood at the store window and the color of his eyes had just knocked her out.
“Oh … well … I suppose…” He made a throwaway gesture and put on an expression of false modesty. “Not that many. About a hundred, maybe.”
“Compliments—or women?”
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