by Edmund White
“I know!” she said. “We could have a Proust ball and everyone would come as the character they were related to.”
“I’d like to be Odette with lots of orchids—like a prom queen,”Addy said. Occasionally, he could be very camp. “But seriously, it would be easier on everyone if we had a peasant ball. Pater”—that’s what he called his father—“could come with three pigs and a scythe.”
“And me?” Victorine asked.
“As a baker woman, like the one who stormed Versailles and dragged Marie-Antoinette off to Paris and prison and eventually her beheading.”
Victorine held up her crossed forefingers as if to ward off the Devil. For her, all of the Bourbons, no matter how remote, were sacred and present and never the source of humor.
Foxy was restless and constantly in motion (“Elle a la bougeotte,” Eudes said). She liked to walk through the grounds and could spend hours in the vegetable garden, which was immense. She was always propping up a vine or lifting and replacing at a different angle one of the huge gourds or swollen melons. She liked to roll a few sticky leaves of rosemary between her fingers and let me smell their piney odor. We would pass the eight symmetrical bowers radiating out from an old fountain of a cherub holding a drooling fish upside down in his chubby arms. We’d take our tea in a stone pagoda decorated with chinoiseries. The princess’s room had eighteenth-century wall paintings illustrating La Fontaine’s fables. Her bed was an ottoman and the embroidered Courance sheets a hundred years old. We would sit by a fountain of the nymph Arethusa, the one who became an underground stream rather than submit to the embraces of a river god, Alpheus. In Shelley’s poem they reconciled but I’d rather think she remained a militant virgin.
“Are you happily married?” Foxy asked out of nowhere one day.
“What do you think?” I said with a bitter laugh. “Adhéaume is impossible.”
“I agree. Selfish. Silly. Superficial. Snobbish.”
“The four S’s,” I said. “What are they again?”
She repeated them and I laughed. I said, “It took me a while to understand how awful he is since he’s a French baron and I’m a cowgirl. But now I can predict to the word, to the second, what he’s going to say. Was he always so dull? And hateful?”
“Dull and predictable, even as a child. I think he took refuge in conventionality, in doing and saying everything comme il faut. He was ashamed of his poverty, of his silly playboy father, of his tediously pious mother. So dull from the start. What they call a young fart. But he’s grown into his hatefulness. When he was poor he was cringing but now that you’ve made him rich he’s become his true self: arrogant. Intolerable.”
“So it’s my fault?”
A sudden gust of wind blew the water from the fountain of Arethusa over us and we leaped up and laughed and headed back to the château.
“Your fault?” Foxy said. “Oh, my dear, not your fault at all. Think how some men, superior men, might have reacted to sudden wealth. My great-great-uncle Prince Albert became a better man after he married Victoria; he combatted slavery worldwide, built model homes for the poor, extended university education to include science, I think—and wore genital jewelry!”
“He what?”
“You’ve never heard of a Prince Albert? Men in those days wore very tight pants and he didn’t want to show his large member so he had a metal ring put into his foreskin so he could tie his penis back and attach it to his belt loop. But it turned out the queen, when they were naked at Balmoral, loved the ring, which knocked against her clitoris. They had nine children and she wanted more! No wonder when he died she went into mourning for forty years—what woman wouldn’t?”
“You just made all that up, naughty girl.”
“No, I swear it’s true. It’s a bona fide piece of family lore.”
I rather liked thinking about a man’s organ, now small and slippery as a fish, then big and red and rigid, imposing, claiming innate prerogatives, both hard and plush like a brass trumpet lifted out of its velvet case, something constantly changing size, now primitive and vascular, now filling out, rising up, hard as bone, smelly and corkscrewing and hairy, an amateurish pipe bomb, something through which we express the soul and pump out hot love but that is bestial, a beast that never must be entirely trusted nor released from his chains. The Frankenstein’s monster of the body, the King Kong of the soul.
I told Foxy that I so loved our children that to my mind they almost justified my bad marriage.
I got to like the Var, our slimy, smelly moat with waves of mosquitos floating above it, the sound of faraway dogs barking, the look of the stunned cows, still as sculpture in the evening light, the white quarry scars, the exciting jeep ride into Tourtour for dinner alfresco, the surrounding mixture of Dutch and English at neighboring tables, the spotlit ancient walls, the average food, the copious wine, the joyful, nearly hysterical way the children ran around the square with other bored tourist children. I was fascinated to see my kids interacting with others. At their age they were almost psychotically self-centered; it didn’t really matter that they spoke mutually incomprehensible languages. They were addicted to the running and yelling, that was all.
What I liked the most was the tedium and the paralyzing heat, the way I had nothing to do at the château, nothing at all except to daydream or fall asleep in a cushioned deep window embrasure against the always cold stone merlon. I read Hugo’s epic poem La Légende des siècles, which excited me because I could understand it and bored me because I could understand it.
Foxy left and I no longer felt pleasantly tired but anguished with ennui. I continued to take my meals with the children, but soon I fell into a somber reverie. It was so hot I’d pray for rain. As soon as the sun would go down the crickets would stop their tedious, frantic sawing and the tree peepers would take over. Every room was filled with the smoke of green burning mosquito-repellent spirals. I thought that in the Middle Ages I would have been obliged to attend Mass daily, I would have feared rodents in the granary, the slightest cut that could turn gangrenous, a raid from the next castle over, the Black Death, the next gathering of drunken, smelly, lecherous crusaders, their hands greasy with grilled pork—never a dull moment, if you throw in the odd mystery play, joust, or failed attempt to turn lead into gold. Much better than all this anxious peace, this attentive solitude.
Whenever I would go past the Zodiac Room I’d hear Addy, Victorine, and Eudes all talking at once in some whispered conciliabule; what could they find so gripping? I knew that the family could spend hours arguing the merits of one brand of candle over another or dissecting some slight, real or imagined, that had been visited on them. They could fuss over Addy’s sick stomach at great length, Victorine holding out for carrots boiled in Vichy water and plain, butterless rice, Eudes promoting the regimen of three whole days without wine and of vigorous morning walks. If they saw me scuttling past they’d go silent. One day Addy came into the nursery to say that Mater and Pater wanted to have a word with me.
“With me?”
“Yes, with you.”
“When?”
“Now.”
I found them in the Zodiac Room, she crocheting pot holders, he playing patience, slapping the cards down impatiently. “Come in, dear,” Victorine said, closing her eyes. I sat precariously on the edge of a chair as if I might fly away at any second. Eudes cast his cards aside, wished me good evening, and turned his chair toward me; Victorine put her knitting down.
“Did you have a good day, dear?” Victorine asked. “Those children must wear you out. I see you flying by like the Dutchman.” She opened her eyes; that’s how I knew she’d reached the end of a sentence. We had polite chat for about ten minutes. Then she touched her crocheting nervously without lifting it. “Dear,” she said, “Eudes and I are so grateful that you’re such a patient, attentive mother. In my day parents saw their children for only a few minutes for a good-night kiss. This modern way is so much kinder, warmer, more Christian.”
Had
she really said “more Christian”? I knew she was very pious, but I’d never before heard her make a direct reference to her faith.
“But there’s one tiny thing.”
“Yes?”
“We all wish you wouldn’t speak to the children in English.”
“Why? Don’t you want them to be bilingual? They hear French all day long.”
“Why should they be bilingual?”
“In case you didn’t notice, English has become the international language.”
Eudes, who’d been nodding like a Chinese doll, now said, “English. Perhaps. But don’t you speak a … dialect?”
Victorine picked up her knitting, said, “Really, Eudes,” and put it down again.
“I speak English with an American accent. With a Texas accent. People says it’s substandard but everyone can understand it.”
“The Princess ‘Tiny’ fur und zu Hohenlicht had trouble with it,” Eudes said.
“Tiny Fur is deaf,” I pointed out.
“That must explain it,” Victorine murmured, unconvinced.
Of course this conversation was ridiculous but it made me very, very angry. I thought, How dare they? Here they were living in my château, ordering around my servants, eating at my table! … But that wasn’t really it. What I resented is that they would thwart my communication with my children. They wouldn’t like the children speaking broken French with a Texas accent; that’s why I left French to the native speakers and it was no accident that ours spoke the best French of all, supposedly, the French of Touraine. They were really trilingual—what with their German. If they wanted them to acquire an Oxford accent, they should hire a poor, upper-middle-class English tutor. Meanwhile I’d make them sound like regular Americans, the most reassuring and democratic accent in the world, the language of movies and pop songs, the language of business, newscasts, international colloquia, airports.
But that was all the rational argument. For me it was intensely emotional. I felt I was being stifled. I was outraged. They’d used my big blonde body and my fortune, but now the broodmare could be put out to pasture. In my loneliness my children were my friends, my treasure, my creation! I loved them, maybe inordinately, but I had no one else to love.
Suddenly I was terribly homesick. I thought, I don’t want to die in France. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live there.
I said, “It’s really none of your business how I speak to my own children. I don’t see them as Courcys but as mine. Mine. You may have dynastic ambitions for them. You believe in the patrimoine that you’re going to hand down to them. But I don’t see them as little aristocrats who must be polished so they’ll marry well and reflect well on the family name. Perpetuate the family name. Wear your seal on their signet rings. Attend les bals blancs for debutantes. I see them as my children. If you don’t watch out, I may change their foolish Christian names and take them back to Texas.”
When Addy came into my room that night his face was white, a new ugly muscle had surfaced in his jaw, his lips were bloodless, and his nose had grown. “How dare you speak to my parents like that! Mater is still shaking like a leaf. You know she has a bad heart. I never saw such ruthlessness.”
“Your mother is tough as nails. I had to draw a line in the sand.”
“Oh, you Anglo-Saxons, always speaking in metaphors!”
“Let me put it in plain French. I’ll speak to my own children in whatever way I choose. They’re as much Crawford as Courcy.”
“Alas.”
“You and your parents haven’t taken out a copyright on my children.”
A new, sly thought dawned on his face. “Don’t imagine you can cut me off without a penny,” Addy said. I could see he’d had this talk many times in his head (or with his parents).
“That’s never entered my mind.”
“Or that you’ll get custody of the children.”
“Of course I will. The mother always wins.”
“Not when she’s immoral. I managed to take photos of you and Hercule and Helen naked in bed, performing unnatural acts.”
“You’re bluffing,” I said, but I remembered those odd clicks.
“They’re in a safe at my bank in Paris.”
“What would you do with the children? You scarcely speak to them as it is, though Foulques is desperate for your attention.”
“I would make their lives miserable, just to spite you. I can’t hurt you but I can hurt you through them.”
“Say that again: You’d make their lives miserable? Why would you do that to your own children?”
“Yes. If I got custody—and I would from the judge in Paris at the Cours de Cassation, he’s my mother’s cousin, and given my proof of your adultery and perversion, and the fact I’m from an old French family and you’re an American nobody—if I had custody I’d send them off to an inferior, very strict provincial Catholic boarding school where they’d be punished frequently, would always go hungry, so hungry they’d suck the starch out of their sheets. If they stole food they’d have to kneel with their bare knees on hard chickpeas and say the rosary for hours till their legs bled. They’d be allowed to bathe only once a week in water their classmates had already dirtied, and they’d learn nothing but Latin.”
I could see he’d already dwelled on this … revenge in detail. “But why on earth would you do that?”
He wasn’t to be deterred in his presentation of the revenge he’d elaborated. “You wouldn’t be permitted to see them more than twice a year, and when you did they’d have forgotten their English, forgotten you, become dirty, cigarette-smoking louts, ignorant and resentful—and they’d know it was your fault, if they thought of you at all.”
“You’re unspeakable, intolerable.”
“I can’t love them since I know you gave birth to them through that filthy cunt of yours.”
I burst into tears and raised my hand as if to ward off his blows. I felt his horrible words to be slaps on the face. When I composed myself I was angry I’d given him the pleasure of seeing me cry. I asked him to leave my room.
Once I was alone I put on my robe and headed out into the airless hot night. There was no moon. When I was sure I was out of earshot, I let myself sob. I didn’t even recognize my pained sounds. I guess I’d never made them before. It was as if I were discovering a wounded, frightened girl within me, someone I hadn’t even known was in there. Or if not a girl then an animal.
I couldn’t see anything, it was so dark. I was walking over the dry, fragrant grass of the Midi. I could hear the fountain of Arethusa plashing somewhere up ahead but I couldn’t see even its faint outlines. I was apparently walking down one of the eight bowers that led to the fountain. I could hear a dog barking antiphonally to another dog—both chained, no doubt, or caged. The peasants bred expensive dogs and kept them in cruelly narrow cages until they sold them.
It crossed my mind that my sobs might be heard after all, that someone would rush to my side to comfort me. But who? The servants wouldn’t. They were asleep after a grueling day of work. Besides, they wouldn’t know how to offer a hug or a handkerchief to the baroness. Addy and his parents hated me, I’d discovered.
I felt so alone, in this wretched country where no one shared my sense of humor, where I’d met a bunch of shabby, egotistical composers, where my only American friend, Helen, had betrayed me with Ercole, where my husband (what a fool I’d been to marry him!) despised me and plotted ways to turn our lovely son and daughter into hungry, squalid ruffians.
I walked and walked in the darkness, the airless night humming all around me like a sarcophagus. I even laughed for a second at the grotesque image; why not laugh? I had no audience for whom I had to play anguish. I was anguished, but I didn’t have to represent it.
Why had Addy become so vile? Because I’d stood up to his sacred parents? Or had Foxy told him that I was bored, resentful, and restless? Up till now he’d always been polite in his icy way. He prided himself on his politeness. Had Foxy warned him I might bolt? Get a civil
divorce, which would leave him in a bind, since the only valid divorce in his world would be a Vatican annulment, hard to obtain? He knew Daddy’s lawyers had insisted on a pre-nuptial séparation de biens and that he would be penniless and crippled with debts if I left him. He’d hoped to have access to my full fortune but he (and his creditors) had learned I’d come into all that money only when I turned thirty. I’d always resented Daddy’s strictures before, but now I saw the wisdom in them.
If I divorced and went back to Dallas, would I still be a baroness? Probably, until I remarried, if and when. I was sure Bobbie Jean was counting on my being a permanent baroness. She’d love to introduce me to her Texas friends as gin-you-whine European nobility.
I felt frightened. By the night and the sound of frogs in the moat. By a sudden rustle in a nearby bush. By my utter lack of allies. By the look of scorn and hatred on my husband’s face.
Had he been drinking? Would he apologize tomorrow? Would he even remember what he said? In vino veritas? Or did alcohol cloud your judgment and let you say things you didn’t mean? Had he been harboring this hatred for a long time? From the beginning? Did he hate me for not being French? Helen had told me once that Addy felt certain he could manipulate foreigners, especially stupid, babyish Americans, that he believed no one was as cunning as a Frenchman or so perfectly retrofitted for survival as a French aristocrat. Maybe when he preened himself over his ability to arrange things, he not only meant the knack of combining and staging bibelots and furniture but also his skills for maneuvering in the world and bending others to his will.
I guess I was shocked by what had happened to our marriage. From the beginning I’d suspected the terms of our deal—his title for my money—but I’d assumed that we’d always maintain terms of respect and cordiality. I knew wives in Texas and France whose husbands beat them. We hadn’t gone that far, maybe because Addy knew I was stronger and fitter than he and because he’d witnessed my turn at dominating Ercole.