The Virgin Blue

by Tracy Chevalier

  People came in behind me and I was forced to slip into the crowd. I couldn't take my eyes off Jean-Paul. When they finished the song there were shouts and prolonged clapping. Jean-Paul looked around, noticed me and smiled. A man to my right patted my shoulder. ‘Better watch out – that's a wolf, that one!’ he shouted, laughing and nodding toward the piano. I turned red and moved away. When Jean-Paul and the woman began another song, I squeezed my way to the bar and miraculously found a stool free.

  The singer's olive skin seemed to be lit from within, her dark eyebrows perfectly shaped. Her long brown hair was wavy and dishevelled, and she drew attention to it as she sang, pulling her fingers through it, tossing her head, holding her wrists to her temples when she hit a high note. Jean-Paul was less flamboyant, his calm presence balancing her theatrics, his playing underlining her sparkling voice. They were very good together – relaxed, confident enough to play around and tease each other. I felt a pang of jealousy.

  Two songs later they took a break and Jean-Paul started toward me, stopping first to speak to every second person. I pulled nervously at my dress, wishing now that it covered my knees.

  When he arrived at my side he said, ‘Salut, Ella,’ and kissed my cheeks the way he had ten other people. I grew calmer, relieved but vaguely disconcerted that I wasn't given special attention. What do you want, Ella? I asked myself furiously. Jean-Paul must have seen the confusion in my face. ‘Come, I'll introduce you to some friends,’ he said simply.

  I slid off the stool and picked up my beer, then waited while he got a whisky from the barman. He gestured toward a table across the room and put his hand on the middle of my back to guide me, keeping his hand there as we pushed through the crowd, dropping it when we reached his friends.

  Six people, including the singer, were sitting on benches on either side of a long table. They squeezed together to make room for us. I ended up next to the singer with Jean-Paul across from me, our knees touching in the cramped space. I looked down at the table, littered with beer bottles and glasses of wine, and smiled to myself.

  The group was discussing music, naming French singers I'd never heard of, laughing uproariously at cultural references that meant nothing to me. It was so loud and they spoke so fast that after a while I gave up listening. Jean-Paul lit a cigarette and chuckled at jokes, but otherwise was quiet. I could feel his eyes rest on me occasionally; once when I returned his gaze he said, ‘Ça va? ’

  I nodded. Janine the singer turned to me and said, ‘So, do you prefer Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday?’

  ‘Oh, I don't listen to either very much.’ This sounded ungracious; she was after all giving me an opening to the conversation. I also wanted to convince myself that I wasn't jealous of her, her beauty and effortless style, her link to Jean-Paul. ‘I like Frank Sinatra,’ I added quickly.

  A balding man with a baby face and two-day stubble sitting next to Jean-Paul snorted. ‘Too sentimental. Too much “show-biz”. He used the English phrase and fluttered his hands next to his ears while putting on a cheesy smile. ‘Now, Nat King Cole, that's different!’

  ‘Yes, but –’ I began. The table looked at me expectantly. I was remembering something my father had said about Sinatra's technique and trying desperately to translate it quickly in my head: exactly what Madame Sentier had told me never to do.

  ‘Frank Sinatra sings without breathing,’ I said, and stopped. That wasn't what I meant: I was trying to say he sang so smoothly that you couldn't hear him breathe, but my French failed me. ‘His –’

  But the conversation had gone on; I hadn't been fast enough. I frowned and shook my head slightly, annoyed at myself and embarrassed the way you are when you start telling a story and realize no one's listening.

  Jean-Paul reached over and touched my hand. ‘You remind me of being in New York,’ he said in English. ‘Sometimes in a bar I could hear nothing and everyone yelled and used words I didn't know.’

  ‘I can't think quickly enough in French yet. Not complicated thoughts.’

  ‘You will. If you stay here long enough you will.’

  The baby-faced man heard our English and looked me up and down. ‘Tu es américaine?’ he demanded.

  ‘Oui.’

  My response had a strange effect: it was like an electric current raced around the table. Everyone sat up and glanced from me to Jean-Paul. I looked at him too, puzzled by the reaction. Jean-Paul reached for his glass and with a jerk of his wrist finished the whisky, a gesture laced with defiance.

  The man smiled sarcastically. ‘Ah, but you're not fat. Why aren't you like every other American?’ He puffed out his cheeks and cupped his hands around an imaginary paunch.

  One thing I discovered about my French – when I was mad it came out like a jet stream. ‘There are fat Americans but at least they don't have huge mouths like the French!’

  The table erupted in laughter, even the man. In fact he looked ready for more. Dammit, I thought. I've taken the bait and now he'll get at me for hours.

  He leaned forward.

  C'mon, Ella, the best defence is offence. It was Rick's favourite phrase; I could almost hear him saying it.

  I interrupted him before he could get a sentence out. ‘Now, America. Of course you will mention, wait, I must get the order right. Vietnam. No, maybe first American films and television, Hollywood, McDonald's on the Champs-Elysées.’ I ticked off my fingers. ‘Then Vietnam. And violence and guns. And the CIA, yes, you must mention the CIA several times. And maybe, if you are a Communist – are you a Communist, Monsieur? – maybe you will mention Cuba. But finally you will mention World War II, that the Americans entered late and were never occupied by the Germans like the poor French. That is the pièce de résistance, n'est-ce pas? ’

  Five people were grinning at me while the man pouted and Jean-Paul brought his empty glass to his mouth to hide his laughter.

  ‘Now,’ I continued. ‘Since you are French, maybe I should ask you if the French treated the Vietnamese better as colonizers. And are you proud of what happened in Algeria? And the racism here against North Africans? And the nuclear testing in the Pacific? You see, you are French, so of course you are a representation of your government, you agree with everything it does, don't you? You little shit,’ I added under my breath in English. Only Jean-Paul caught it; he looked at me in astonishment. I smiled. Not so ladylike, then.

  The man put his fingertips to his chest and flung them outwards in a gesture of defeat.

  ‘Now, we were discussing Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. You must excuse my French, sometimes it takes me a little while to say what I mean. What I wanted to say was that one cannot hear his – what do you call it?’ I put my hand on my chest and breathed in.

  ‘Respiration,’ Janine suggested.

  ‘Yes. It is impossible to hear it when he sings.’

  ‘They say that's because of a technique of circular breathing he learned from –’ A man at the other end of the table was off and running, to my relief.

  Jean-Paul stood up. ‘I must play now,’ he said quietly to me. ‘You will stay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. You are good at fighting your angle, yes?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, fighting your –’ He pointed to the back of the room.

  ‘Starting a bar-room brawl?’

  ‘No, no.’ He ran his finger round a corner edge of the table.

  ‘Oh, fighting my corner. Yes, I'll be OK. I'll be fine.’

  And it was fine. No one brought up other American stereotypes, I managed to contribute occasionally, and when I couldn't understand what they were talking about I just listened to the music.

  Jean-Paul played some honky-tonk; then Janine joined him. They ran through a range of songs: Gershwin, Cole Porter, several French songs. At one point they briefly conferred; then with a glance at me Janine began singing Gershwin's ‘Let's Call The Whole Thing Off’, while Jean-Paul smiled into his keys.

  Later the crowd thinned and Janine c
ame to sit across from me. There were only three of us left at the table and we'd fallen into that late-night comfortable silence when everything has been said. Even the balding man was quiet.

  Jean-Paul continued to play – quiet, contemplative music, a few chords underlying simple lines of melody. It veered between classical and jazz, a combination of Erik Satie and Keith Jarrett.

  I leaned across to Janine. ‘What's he playing?’

  She smiled. ‘It's his own music. He composes it himself.’

  ‘It's beautiful.’

  ‘Yes. He only plays it when it is late.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  She looked at her watch. It was almost two.

  ‘I didn't know that it was so late!’

  ‘You have no watch?’

  I held out my wrists. ‘I left it at home.’ Our eyes lit on my wedding ring at the same time; instinctively I drew my hands in. It was so much a part of me that I'd forgotten all about it. If I had remembered it I probably still wouldn't have taken it off: that would have been too calculated.

  I met her eyes and blushed, making things even worse. For a moment I considered going to the bathroom and removing the ring, but I knew she would notice, so I hid my hands in my lap and changed the subject, pointedly asking her where she got her blouse. She took the hint.

  A few minutes later the rest of the table got up to go. To my surprise Janine left with the balding man. They waved cheerily at me, Janine blew a kiss at Jean-Paul and they were gone with the last of the crowd. We were alone except for the barman, who was collecting glasses and wiping down tables.

  Jean-Paul finished the piece he was playing and sat silent for a moment. The barman whistled tunelessly as he stacked chairs on tables. ‘Eh, François, two whiskies here if you're not being cheap.’ François smirked but went behind the bar and poured out three glasses. He placed one before me with a brief bow and set another on top of the piano. Then he removed the cash register drawer and, balancing it in one hand and his glass in another, disappeared into a back room.

  We raised our glasses and drank at the same time.

  ‘There is nice light on your head, Ella Tournier.’ I glanced up at the soft yellow spotlight above me: it was touching my hair with copper and gold. I looked back at him; he played a low soft chord.

  ‘Did you have classical training?’

  ‘Yes, when I was young.’

  ‘Do you know any Erik Satie?’

  He set his glass down and began to play a piece I recognized, in five-four time with an even, stark melody. It fit the room, the light, the hour perfectly. While he played I rested my hands in my lap and removed my ring, dropping it into my dress pocket.

  When he finished he left his hands on the keys for a moment, then picked up his glass and drained it. ‘We must go,’ he said, standing up. ‘François needs his sleep.’

  Going outside was like re-entering the world after having had flu for a week: the world felt big and strange and I wasn't sure of my bearings. It was cooler now and there were stars overhead. We passed by the shutters with the painting of the woman and soldiers on them. ‘Who was she?’ I asked.

  ‘That's La Dame du Plô. She was a Cathar martyr in the thirteenth century. Soldiers raped her, then threw her down a well and filled it with stones.’

  I shuddered and he put his arm around me. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘or you'll accuse me of talking about the wrong things at the wrong time.’

  I laughed. ‘Like Goethe.’

  ‘Yes, like Goethe.’

  Earlier I'd wondered if there would be a moment when we'd have to decide something, discuss it, analyse it. Now that the moment had arrived it was clear we had been silently negotiating all evening and a decision had already been made. It was a relief not to say anything, just to walk to his car and get in. In fact we hardly spoke on the drive back. When we passed Lavaur cathedral he noted my car alone in the parking lot. ‘Your car,’ he said, a statement rather than a question.

  ‘I'll take the train here tomorrow.’ That was it; no fuss.

  When we reached the countryside I asked him to roll back the roof of the Deux Chevaux. He flipped it over without stopping. I rested my head on his shoulder; he put his arm around me and ran his hand up and down my bare arm while I leaned back and watched the sycamores whipping by overhead.

  When we crossed the bridge over the Tarn into town I sat up. Even at three in the morning some decorum seemed necessary. Jean-Paul lived in an apartment on the other side of town from me, close to where the countryside began. Even so it was only a ten-minute walk from my house, a fact I was working hard to push from my mind.

  We parked and got out, then snapped the roof back on together. The surrounding houses were dark and shuttered. I followed him up a set of stairs on the outside of a house to his door. I stood just inside while he switched on a lamp, illuminating a neat room lined with books.

  He turned around and held his hand out to me. I swallowed; my throat was tight. When it came down to the final deciding moment, I was terrified.

  At last I reached out, took his hand and pulled him to me, put my arms around him and clung to his back, my nose in his neck. Then the fear vanished.

  The bedroom was spare but contained the largest bed I'd ever seen. A window looked out over fields; I stopped him from closing the shutters.

  It felt like one long movement. There was no point when I thought, Now I'm doing this, now he's doing that. There was no thought, just two bodies recognizing each other, making themselves whole together.

  We didn't sleep until the sun rose.

  I woke to bright sunlight and an empty bed. I sat up and looked around. There were two bedside tables, one covered with books, a framed black and purple poster for a jazz piano concert on the wall over the bed, a coarse woven mat the colour of wheat on the floor. Outside the fields behind the house were bright green and extended far back to a row of sycamores and a road. It all had the same air of simplicity as Jean-Paul's clothes.

  The door opened and Jean-Paul entered, dressed in black and white, carrying a small cup of black coffee. He set it down on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed next to me.

  ‘Thank you for the coffee.’

  He nodded. ‘Ella, I must go to work now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He smiled in reply.

  ‘I feel like I didn't get any sleep,’ I said.

  ‘Three hours. You can sleep more here if you want.’

  ‘That would be strange, being in this bed without you.’

  He ran a hand up and down my leg. ‘If you want you maybe wait until there are not so many people in the street.’

  ‘I guess so.’ For the first time I heard the shouts of children passing; it was like kicking down a barrier, the first intrusion of the outside world. With it came the unwelcome furtiveness, the need to be cautious. I wasn't sure I was ready for that yet, or to have him be so sensible.

  Pre-empting my thoughts, he held my gaze and said, ‘It's you I think of. Not me. It's different for me. It's always different for a man here.’

  It was sobering, such straight talk. It forced me to think.

  ‘This bed —’ I paused. ‘It's way too big for one person. And you wouldn't have two tables and lamps like this if it was just you sleeping here.’

  Jean-Paul scanned my face. Then he shrugged; with that gesture we really did re-enter the world.

  ‘I lived with a woman for a while. She left about a year and a half ago. The bed was her idea.’

  ‘Were you married?’

  ‘No.’

  I put my hand on his knee and squeezed it. ‘I'm sorry,’ I said in French. ‘I should not have mentioned it.’

  He shrugged again, then looked at me and smiled. ‘You know, Ella Tournier, all that talk in French last night has made your mouth bigger. I am sure of it!’

  He kissed me, his lashes glittering in the sun.

  When the front door shut behind him everything seemed to change. I had never felt so
strange being in someone else's house before. I sat up stiffly, sipped the coffee, set it down. I listened to the children outside, the cars passing, the occasional Vespa. I missed him terribly and wanted to leave as soon as possible, but felt trapped by the sounds outside.

  Finally I got up and took a shower. My yellow dress was crumpled and smelled of smoke and sweat. When I put it on I felt like a tramp. I wanted to go home but forced myself to wait until the streets were quieter. While I waited I looked at his books in the living room. He had a lot on French history, many novels, a few books in English: John Updike, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe. A strange combination. I was surprised that the books weren't in any order: fiction and non-fiction were mixed up and not even alphabetized. Apparently he didn't bring his work habits home with him.