by Edmund White
I think of you during my prayers every day, how you have submitted to a discipline as well, to learn a complex language and a whole new set of subtle customs, how you mayn’t eat too much and must endure endless fittings during which couturiers stab you with their little straight pins, how you must always smile even when you have one of our horrible migraines, how for the moment you’re friendless, transplanted from our blowsy, comfortable Texas with all your sorority sisters to a stern, austere Paris, still suffering from wartime shortages and committed to a rigorous code of hints and manners. You’re a quick study but even you must feel overwhelmed sometimes by how muted every ironic word must be, how loaded. At least that’s how I remember your friend Pauline (isn’t it her grandmother you’re staying with?). Of course, that’s racist to say—I’m sure the French are fundamentally like everyone else, if we can even generalize about “the French.” My job is not to love everyone for himself but to love the Christ in every person.
My bishop is Swiss but, in spite of his name, French-speaking from Geneva and not German from Zurich. Bishop Oscar is very quiet but very loving, in his fifties, I suppose. I gather that when he first arrived on this continent he was quite conservative politically and theologically, but in the fifteen intervening years he’s become “radical” in the original sense of returning to his “roots,” i.e., to the roots of Christ’s message, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. He sees how brutal and selfish the big landowners can be, how influential they are with the police, the government, and even (alas) with the hierarchy of the Church. Whereas Bishop Oscar started out obedient in all things, now he gives weekly broadcasts from the cathedral and often touches on questions of social equality. He does so only in conformity with Christ’s love of the poor and his distrust of the rich; in all things he obeys Christ’s vicar and Peter’s heir, the pope. Bishop Oscar has undergone the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola, a four-week training that I myself am participating in, halfway through. One of the crucial methods is imagining everything about Our Lord’s life, the places he preached, the people he met, the Marriage at Cana—how it looked, smelled, how the wine tasted, what his cloak felt like to the lips when kissed. The sound of sheep bells or a horse trotting. It’s really like Stanislavski’s “sense memory,” and you can’t imagine how vivid all these precious subjects of meditation become! As you recall, Stanislavski taught his actors not to attempt to re-create the emotions of the past but to remember in hallucinatory detail the sensory surround of each moment. He thought if you can remember the sights, smells, sounds—then the elusive feelings will come flooding back. And that’s more or less what Saint Ignatius taught, too.
It’s great to have a road map toward sanctity—and to have Bishop Oscar as my spiritual advisor. Interestingly, Saint Ignatius Loyola warned the spiritual advisor not to be too strict with the postulant and not to dictate to him or her the “right” way. Left to his own devices he might come up with something new or at least more fitting, more appropriate. Not that Bishop Oscar needs to be warned to be kind. And Saint Ignatius Loyola does instruct the postulant not to harm his health through excessive fasting or long vigils (necessary wisdom for me, who is so greedy for suffering—or what Saint Teresa of Ávila calls the “delectable pain” God visits on believers).
Am I in love with Bishop Oscar?
As you know, I’ve never felt the slightest carnal desire, though of course I recognize it is a legitimate, God-given appetite if it is blessed by marriage and indulged in strictly for procreation. If children are the natural fruit of marriage, then it is also true that unbridled passion can be the most destructive human sentiment. I say “unbridled,” because I’m thinking of the chariot allegory in which Plato conceives of the charioteer as the intellect guiding two horses, one representing reason and the other concupiscence; the charioteer’s job is to control both horses.
But as you know, the nuns think of themselves as “brides of Christ” and even wear wedding rings; they are usually very proud of their spouse and their parents are delighted with their son-in-law (don’t think I’m mocking anyone; I’m just trying to speak as vividly as possible). So even this spiritual version of serving God is marital.
I never think of Bishop Oscar as a man. Or rarely. Once on a very hot day I caught a whiff of his underarm odor (that sounds silly) and I thought to myself only a man could smell like that, like a brackish pond. It wasn’t desire I felt, but rather a kind of animal recognition bordering on repulsion. Then I prayed and thought of the great physical sacrifice a healthy man still in his prime must constantly make to be celibate (I’m guessing chastity must be easier for a woman. Maybe not). I’ve heard that if women forego sex for a long time they forget about it, whereas men become more and more tormented.
No, I don’t think of Bishop Oscar as a man except insofar as I picture a man when I pray to God. He is witty, charming, playful and wise, sustaining, strict. I’ve never met a person more enlightened or kinder. Like me, he agrees that the poor are dearer to God than anyone else and that our highest mission should be to serve them.
Which brings me to a problem. As you know, you and I have considerable resources. I’m tempted to spend everything I have on the indigenous population who live in the rain forest, who die young from hunger and disease, who do not even wear clothes, who are gentle and naive but far from being “saved” or even baptized. Their life expectancy is forty. But if I give them my millions, will I destroy or at least distort their culture? I pray constantly for guidance.
Daddy and Bobbie Jean are threatening to come down here. You know how strangely attached he is to me. Maybe that’s why I turn to Bishop Oscar like a flower to the sun; I feel safe with him. Maybe Daddy has caught wind that I might do something foolish with my fortune. I made the mistake of talking to Daddy’s banker when I was back in Dallas last Christmas. Bankers are not as discreet as priests.
I love you, Yvonne. I know I once offended you by saying I love the Christ in you, which is true, but I also love you as my sister, my twin.
CHAPTER 8
I was thrilled and troubled by Yvette’s letter, by her way of anticipating every thought of mine, every objection and assent. It worried me that she’d give all her money away to some flea-bitten perspiring priest and I was glad that Daddy might put a stop to that sort of foolishness. It was obvious she was in love with Oscar. I wondered about her crush on “Father” Oscar, given her horrid past with our real father.
Jericó sounded ghastly, with its magenta walls, mules sashaying past, and men and their male shoulder-strap purses (firemen and cops in Paris—tacky men like that—carry male purses because their trousers are so tight and pocketless). And all those nuns on their knees at four A.M. I thought at least she was comparatively safe in that village—but what about all those drug smugglers? I’d heard cocaine came from Colombia—was it a bit like novocaine? People said it wasn’t addictive. It just gave you crazy energy.
Adhéaume began to drop by regularly at his aunt Spanky’s for her horrible dinners. Even Mme de Castiglione remarked on how singular it was. “He’s always been devoted to family—it’s almost a cult with him. But we have much more brilliant family members than I—women who still tend a musical salon or a monarchist one. Women who can still attract a François Mauriac or Iannis Xenakis, the great Greek composer. We had the Daudets till recently (they died). You mention Hemingway—I met him! No, I never read him but he was a very nice man. Poor when I knew him, but handsome—as handsome as Boni de Castellane.” We loved our Spanky.
Adhéaume always had something amusing to say or report. He was in Amsterdam to see a Vermeer show and came back with a complete canal’s worth of miniature Dutch blue china replicas of tall, skinny houses. He had a woman in veils who smelled of cigarettes come by one evening to read our tarot cards (she could see an aristocratic marriage in my future, which I must confess thrilled me). He often accompanied Spanky to morning Mass, but he was usually still in evening clothes with a wilted flower in his lapel. He kn
ew everything about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French furniture and never stopped talking about goût (taste, not excretions or “goo”). He had very precise evaluations of people, especially women: “She is an exquisite beauty, fundamentally shy, coldhearted but theoretically devoted to her friends.” Or he could say, “Madamoiselle Morgan, a little heavyset, was very elegantly dressed, with a pleasant, healthy face, an overwhelmingly good constitution, a purposeless busyness, a lively curiosity about everything, more receptive than creative. She didn’t get along with her father. Her mother adored her. Her brothers resented her independence.” If he thought a woman ugly he’d say she looked like a toe without a nail.
He took me horseback riding. I wasn’t so sure about an English saddle; I was used to hanging on to the knob of a big old comfortable Western saddle, but my thigh muscles were strong and I had a good “seat.” I think Adhéaume was pleased. I had a very Baptist cousin come visit me. She was rich, lived in the Panhandle, her family had invented a cure for blackleg, something cows get, and Adhéaume took us to La Tour d’Argent. She insisted we three hold hands to say a blessing before we ate our bloody ducks; that must have been a first for him and La Tour d’Argent (“Dear Lord, bless the bloody birds we are about to eat and bring peace and happiness to my beloved Why-Von and to her nice French friend. Amen”).
Cousin Dorothy was horrified by his offer to serve us wine, but in her best coquettish Texas way, she slapped his arm with her gloves, laughed, and exclaimed, “Oh you! The very idea!” Luckily he understood his faux pas instantly. The French have a sort of social gyroscope that orients them very fast. After lunch he invited us to the Musée Gustave Moreau, once the artist’s private house; the first floor, where the family lived, is divided up into tiny rooms chockablock with heavy furniture, but the studio, up above, is tall and all glass and sunstruck. Moreau had his sketches put between panes of glass on a spindle that opened like the leaves of a book. Cousin Dorothy, always smiling and dressed in baby blue, looked at them suspiciously; her smile never faded but I saw her mood darken when she looked at the lurid paintings, thick with impasto. “Here, Dorothy,” Adhéaume said, “you’ll like these biblical scenes—Salomé dancing with the head of John the Baptist or Judith decapitating Holofernes …”
“I declare,” Dorothy said. “I wish they weren’t in my Bible.”
She was staying in Hotel le Bristol in a suite, a room for her maid and another for her two Scotties. She invited us up to her room for an iced tea, which came with mint leaves poking out of the top that she cast aside. Adhéaume played with the dogs, Sir Walter and Bobbie Burns, though I could tell he was too fastidious to really enjoy their yapping and licking and constant circling about; Bobbie even peed a bit and a drop landed on Adhéaume’s church shoes (later he had his shoes handmade in London; he always said you could tell a gentleman by his shoes).
But he was very well behaved. He chitchatted with Cousin Dorothy in an instantly improvised version of that horrible Texas custom of “visiting.” He asked her about her plans to visit London and Berlin and where she’d be staying (Claridge’s and the Kempinski). Of the former he said, “They have a great high tea and it’s five minutes from Bond Street,” and of the latter he said, “Best swimming pool in Berlin. Every starlet has her bikini session there,” and once again Dorothy playfully slapped his arm and said, “Oh, you!” I could tell she didn’t like him. I just knew she was sitting there thinking, And he’s sure as heck a Catholic, too. I knew Adhéaume would sooner die than be dull and she’d sooner die than be risqué. She could talk about the weather for hours; his mother had taught him it was vulgar to say it was too warm.
He began to advise me on my clothes. I wondered if he was gay or just French. I resented his advice but I was clever enough to recognize it was good advice. I wondered how a man of all things could have such an eye for hats, gloves, shoes, jewelry, and how to put together an ensemble down to the perfume. He liked me to wear honeysuckle, or chèvrefeuille; I wondered which mistress it reminded him of. He said all American perfumes smelled like bubble gum.
“Taste” he thought of as his strong suit. His was very conservative, “blue chip,” as I said. He was infernally picky; he could spend two hours at Puiforcat choosing a serving spoon. He wouldn’t wear a tie that didn’t come from Charvet or eat a peach that wasn’t from Hédiard. You know I’m not religious, but something Protestant in me rebelled against all this materialism disguised as elegance.
We “motored” to the South of France and the Var, a Texas-size trip of eight hours, from Paris. We were going to visit Henri, the Red Duke, who’d remembered his invitation and made it a second time. The château was lovely, at the top of a landscaped hill above the village; the houses were like children clinging to their mother’s hoop skirts, the walls around the castle. When we arrived on the gravel path, eight liveried footmen minus the wigs, thank God, were lined up, four and four, on each side of our car. The American in me wanted to say howdy to each of them, but I followed Adhéaume’s example and reserved my smile for the duke, who trotted out and kissed my hand like a dunking bird sticking his felt beak in a glass of water—except no touching with the lips (Adhéaume later explained that it was bad form to kiss a lady’s hand outdoors, but his point seemed odd, given that we were already on the Duke’s grounds).
The château had a large square part that was sixteenth century and an adjoining eighteenth-century tower, far more graceful, with wonderful plasterwork tendrils in bisque against a pale-blue background, all curved, of course—it was our tower. The duke had placed me on the second floor and Adhéaume on the third. “Of course, it’s Liberty Hall here, and you can circulate freely.” He winked naughtily at me. “Breakfast in bed, but only after you pull the rope beside your bed. No surprises—this isn’t a French farce. In the morning do you like café au lait and croissants and orange juice?”
“Yes,” we said in chorus and the majordomo nodded and left the room. Another, younger servant, timid, afraid to look us in the eye, delivered our luggage and slipped away, as insubstantial as a cloud in trousers.
When we were alone, I said to Adhéaume, “Shouldn’t we have brought a house gift?”
“Pourquoi? Très mauvais ton, les cadeaux.”
And that was that. With him there was no use saying, “But in my country,” since he despised every country except France. He thought he was doing me (and all Americans) an enormous civilizing favor to teach us French ways; no cultural relativism here. Years later in Istanbul we had only crossed the threshold into the world’s largest covered bazaar before he said, “There’s nothing here. Let’s leave.” I insisted we look around and in fact we found a small gated bazaar in the very center that was full of antiques and curios and jewelry, where Adhéaume bought some lovely hand-painted Ottoman water glasses.
Eventually I figured out that since the gratin endlessly visits one another for country weekends, no one should bring a gift. A bottle of wine? An insult to the host’s cellar. A book? Possibly, if one has written it. A lovely piece of Sicilian pottery, if sent afterward with a bread-and-butter note (une lettre de château). And of course a handsome tip to the servants.
Communist he may have been but Henri was very harsh with the servants, constantly muttering reprimands about the table service (“Forgive me, but he’s new and a total oaf”). The oaf was the same shy boy who’d brought up our luggage. I sneaked a smile at him.
The duke was proud of his English and with reason. I was delighted to be speaking my own language—so restful. And it gave me a chance to be funny, which I loved, and which wasn’t yet possible in my rudimentary French. At dinner—a cucumber salad and cold pheasant stuffed with apricots, and a peachy rosé—I was seated in the place of honor, to the right of the duke. There was a Frenchman, small but bristling with virility, and his American wife or possible ex-wife, an actress I’d seen once in a Truffaut film, a strawberry blonde “in the flower of age,” as the French refer to people in their fifties. She was slim, simply but be
autifully dressed, radically “lifted” (“Her face was butchered,” Adhéaume said later), heavily sunscreened. I liked her right off. She touched my arm as we went in for dinner, as American women will do, and I hoped we could gossip later. The conversation was in English but typical of social people in that it was all about schedules and other people’s sex scandals. (“She told him he could say anything in his memoirs except that they didn’t make love—after all she was keeping him.” “Venice in September, of course, Gstaad for Christmas, Tangier in April—with lots of side trips to London for clothes and shows.” “Carlo said he would give her anything for Mme de Pompadour’s gold microscope and she said, ‘All right, send me your boyfriend, the baron, for a night,’ and he said, ‘Fine,’ and he did but the only problem was that the baron fell for her and became her full-time live-in lover. Flûte! Carlo was furious.”)
I was dying to get the American actress, Helen, alone, so after dinner when we moved into the library to drink thyme tisane out of a bamboo-sleeved thermos and tiny Chinese cups, I installed myself on the love seat and patted the place next to me, staring at her. She turned around as if I might be looking at someone behind her. When she realized I was inviting her to join me, she shrugged slightly, smiled, and came over.
“How nice to meet an American!” I said. “We’re pretty thin on the ground here. Where are you from, Helen?”
“California. Sacramento. Actually, right after the war I was Miss California. That’s when Édouard found me. He fell madly in love with me and proposed within two weeks, so that’s how Miss California became the Princess of Foix.”