by Edmund White
I smiled slowly at my savior.
After a moment, he smiled back. “We never had this conversation.”
“What conversation?” I asked.
Father Pierre said he would like to see the temple of Hercules. I accompanied him there, he breathing heavily with his brandy fumes and taking two steps for every one of mine. I slowed down and gave him my arm. I felt very blond and manly.
Once we looked at the temple replica with its circular footprint and Corinthian capitals, three columns artfully fallen whereas the original was intact (the real temple was just beside the bocca della verità—the mask in whose mouth a liar risked having her hand bitten off), we walked over to the precipice and looked down at the olive trees gone wild. “Just a little push,” Pierre said.
That night I went in to kiss my sleeping babies. When Ghislaine began to fuss, I said, rather harshly, “For God’s sake, Ghislaine, don’t fret.” I suppose I thought I was about to commit a crime for their sake and they should be grateful. I don’t know why I was so strict with her.
Then I went to bed, read for a few moments, and snapped off my light with that sinking feeling of disappointment that always visited me when another day had ended and I was about to surrender consciousness. Was the party over? Never going to happen? Is that all there is?
I listened for footsteps in the hallway. I half-thought that Addy might come to me, apologize for everything, make love to me. I wouldn’t have to kill him. In my dreams, however, he was nasty and snide. He was also a white rat with an electrode planted in his cortex, an animal running on a moving walkway.
The next night at dinner I sat next to Addy, which made him raise a sealskin eyebrow. I played “vivacious” and “charming” as only a Texas deb can do. I told him his hair looked wonderful like that. He looked confused and touched his hair and murmured, “I used a new conditioner.”
“It’s like silk,” I said, touching it. “You’ve never looked better. That plain burgundy tie, white shirt, and dark blue jacket—you have such perfect taste.”
Now he was wearing a suspicious little smile. “What’s come over you?” He didn’t actually say that but he might could.
“Isn’t this a delicious wine?” I asked, filling his glass; it was a very old Nuits-Saint-Georges grand cru.
“Please, no more, I already had my normal two glasses.”
“Let’s drink more than usual. It’s such a lovely night. We might go for a walk after dinner.”
“Where?”
“I want to show Father Pierre the temple to Hercules you’re building.”
“Hercules? Don’t go imagining it’s in homage to your Ercole.”
Like my Baptist cousin, the one who playfully slapped Adhéaume’s shoulder at La Tour d’Argent when he suggested they order wine, I laughed and frowned and pretended to touch his sleeve reproachfully. “Oh, you, I don’t ever think of him.”
Father Pierre was exclaiming over the view, of the last rays of sunlight illuminating the sudden rain, and begged everyone to come to the window, where he’d pulled back the heavy curtains. To be obliging, everyone joined him and Spanky the Pious said it was like God’s grace, the crystal heart of an affliction.
I’d torn open the packet of digitalis and stirred it into Addy’s wineglass and refilled it.
“I saw you!” Addy shouted, returning to the table. “You’re determined to get me drunk.”
Father Pierre said, “If you’re really afraid of being hungover tomorrow, just pop this suppository in, it’s called Supponeryl. It will give you a perfect night’s sleep and you’ll wake up feeling refreshed.”
“I’m not used to suppositories,” Addy said with a troubled look. All of his relatives were reacting to the mention of this novelty.
“I’ve used it,” I said. “Three times. It’s heavenly.”
“You just take it out of its foil wrapping and pop it in,” the good priest said.
“Is it painful?”
“Of course not, it’s glycerine and very small. You won’t even feel it.”
“I’ll take it,”Addy said, rising to the challenge, “not for a hangover but for a decent night’s sleep. I’ve had terrible insomnia.”
“No more,” Father Pierre said. “Now you’ll sleep like the dead.”
“When do I take it?”
“Now. Just duck into the Henri the Third loo. In an hour you’ll be floating on a cloud.”
“I’m so grateful,” Addy said, and absented himself.
Neither Pierre nor I was skilled at winking, but we tried our best, looking at each other.
“It’s true,” Addy said, reemerging, “I don’t feel a thing.” I was gratified to see he finished off his wine, saying, “It’s too good not to enjoy.”
“And now our walk to the temple,” I said. “I’ve promised Father Pierre you’d show it to him, and explain the details. All the details.”
“Well, come along, children,” and he crooked both elbows, one for me and one for the literary priest.
It was early spring and a gentle rain was falling, more a mist, and indeed there were trails of mist in the valley below us. Good, I thought, the footing will be slippery. Addy was already getting groggy and he kept leaning into me. I could sense his knees were buckling. He was cheerful and unsuspicious, perhaps because I’d been flattering throughout the dinner—his last, one might hope. My strategic kindness had made me see how easy it would be to win back his affections, if I was willing to let him “dilapidate” my fortune, as the French put it. I realized Adhéaume despised me for making money the red line in our marriage, but I wasn’t a materialist (certainly not compared to the Courcys); it was just I feared no one would want me without my millions. I had grown so used to wealth as part of my appeal; I suppose it was a bit like fame. One might deplore the attraction of being famous, but one counted on it. TV celebrities outside their range of fame always looked so bewildered. Poor, I’d feel nude. Common. Or old. Stripped of this annoying but all-powerful advantage.
Addy was prattling on about another folly, the Désert de Retz, put together in the late eighteenth century. “The temple of Pan was my model—Roman, rounded—except all the columns are standing. The whole place (it’s next to the destroyed royal residence of Marly) is enchanting. Do you know it, Father?”
“I regret to say I don’t.”
“There you are wrong,” Addy said in his bossy, know-it-all way. “Utterly enchanting—must sit down.”
“We’re almost there. Let’s keep going,” I said. “The Désert de Retz?”
“Udderly tscarmin,” Addy mumbled, stumbling, though Pierre and I kept him from falling.
“But why did you decide to build your temple with prefallen columns?”
“Mo’ pitchersque.”
“Let’s look at the wild olive trees,” Father Pierre said.
“Why?” Addy asked. He was drooling on himself now.
“So picturesque,” I said, steering him over to the precipice.
“I’m afraid of catching a chill,” Pierre said suddenly. Quite right, too, I thought. I should be the only witness.
“But wait! We’re going to look ass wild Olivia.”
But Father Pierre had rushed off. Addy was leaning heavily into me.
“Point out your favorite olive tree,” I said, guiding him right up to the edge of the precipice.
“Thas tall one.”
“Which one? Point it out to me, Addy.”
He pointed and I pushed. As he fell he shouted and then he hit something solid. Rocks, I remember. There was no light and I couldn’t be sure he was dead. But I waited a moment and listened for a groan. Nothing. I started wailing. “Oh, my God, help! Help! Adhéaume has fallen! Help! Help!”
I ran sobbing all the way back to the château. For an instant Victorine and Eudes, who’d moved into the Zodiac Room and their green slipper chairs, looked at me as if I was being a loud Texas woman yet again, but within minutes they understood, a servant with a flashlight was leading us all
to the precipice, Father Pierre had given his arm to Spanky, Prince Eddie had his arm around me, Eudes kept saying, “What’s happened? Who’s fallen? Please, tell me what’s happened.”
“It’s Addy, Eudes,” Victorine said.
“Is it serious?” The French word grave sounded more tragic than “serious.” “It can’t be serious.”
“Courage, Eudes, courage!” Victorine said, grabbing his hand as they staggered over the muddy ground. By the time we reached the edge of the precipice, the servant was shining his flashlight down on the bloody mess: Addy’s broken body and upturned face. “Run down there,” Victorine ordered the servant, “and see if he still has a pulse. Hurry! Hurry!” except the Vite! Vite! sounded like the blades of scissors cutting the tender air. I was reminded that Victorine was proud to be descended from crusaders. She put her open hand across Eudes’s eyes to spare him the sight of his mangled son; Eudes’s antecedents were less brave. “He’s dead,” the kneeling servant shouted up to us.
“How did this happen?” Victorine asked me in a commanding, deep contralto voice I’d never heard before.
“He went to the very edge to point out his favorite wild olive tree, and he must have slipped.”
Prince Eddie looked me in the eyes and smiled in the dark; his wink was very practiced.
CHAPTER 19
After Adhéaume’s “tragic” death, the château settled down with remarkable ease. Victorine and Eudes must have decided between themselves not to make a “fuss.” They reported the “accidental” death to the police, who sent out an inspector to ask a few questions. Our answers must have satisfied him (“heavy drinking,” “rain,” “no lighting,” “slipped,” “dead instantly,” “widow only observer”) because they decided to forego an autopsy, which Adhéaume, as a pious Catholic, would have opposed in the interests of preserving his body, already badly mangled, for the Resurrection. His distraught parents wanted him prepared for immediate burial with his ancestors. (“That was his principal reason for buying the château,” Victorine explained, “to be eventually reunited with his forebears. A bit prematurely, in this case. The Courcys have been buried here for centuries,” which the inspector, a local, seemed to know already.) “It’s good to see the old families back where they belong,” the inspector said under his breath, as if embarrassed.
We already had in residence our family priest, Father Pierre, who agreed to stay on two more weeks, to say a Mass for Addy every day in the castle chapel, to play consoler-in-chief, to pave Addy’s way to Heaven, and to make all the funeral arrangements (including hiring the parish choir to sing an In Paradisum). The black vestments, the polished mahogany coffin with gold fittings, the flowers, the candles—everything was chosen by Victorine, who was in her element. Father Pierre, of course, was impeccable. He knew that a layman’s feet in the coffin should be facing the altar, whereas a priest’s head should be in that position. Of course, he knew when this or that should be recited or sung, when the holy water should be sprinkled, and when everyone should be incensed.
Four little bells were rung during the consecration. Everything in those days was recited in Latin, of course, which left me alone with my thoughts and a mild feeling of guilt (or maybe just a fear of being found out and apprehended). When Communion was celebrated I led the parade in my widow’s weeds. No one seemed grief-struck; I wished we could still rent professional pleureuses. In England, I understood, there was a service, Rent-a-Mourner.
The twins were restless and confused. If the coffin had been open, they might have understood that something had happened to their father, but the disastrous state of his corpse after the fall had made a closed coffin a necessity. Ghislaine kept sliding down from her pew just in front of me, where she was seated with her brother and Frau Dichter, and racing about, inspecting the flowers, touching the carved wood at the foot of the altar. Foulques was tired and sucking his thumb, his eyes crossed with boredom, his short pants bunched unbecomingly around his slumping crotch. In a rage I leaped up and grabbed Ghislaine by the arm: “You will sit quietly beside your brother, young lady. This is not about you, for once, but a very solemn moment celebrating your poor father. Do you understand me?” I hissed in English. All my excitement had turned into anger. Ghislaine looked terrified and ran back to the pew, where Frau Dichter lifted her back up into her seat and then straightened her skirt. In a rare gesture of affection the good lady patted her on the head and Ghislaine turned toward her, eclipsing her face, and hid against her black serge suit jacket, even pulling some of the rough fabric over her features.
A wave of guilt and something like grief broke over me. Why was I so harsh to the little girl? Yvette had asked me that and had instantly picked up on how I was more drawn to my son. Perhaps because most grown-ups had preferred my sunny disposition to my somber sister’s bookishness, even aloofness, I was alert to any partiality. There was something brazen in my daughter that alarmed me, an explicitness, that compared unfavorably in my mind with my son’s innerlichkeit, as Frau Dichter called it, one could even say his mystery.
I had seen how brutal and decisive I could be; I was afraid that nothing could stop me now. Once the tiger had tasted human blood, she was on her way to becoming a serial killer.
Father Pierre said the absolution at the bier and then the coffin was carried by Prince Eddie, a neighbor, and four footmen out to the cemetery. I was glad my face was hidden by my black veil, as heavy as a beekeeper’s mask, to keep out the sting of indiscreet glances and to conceal the buzz of my dry, wandering eyes. Only at the graveside did Father Pierre say a few words in French about the deceased. “His family and intimates will always remember his exquisite taste, his love of tradition, and his way of making traditions live again. He was filial and devoted to his wife and now orphaned children, for whom we must pray, since they are fatherless. Let us hope that as the archangels open the portals of Heaven to Adhéaume de Courcy, he will take delight in being rejoined to his noble ancestors, those armored and visored heroes of the Crusades. And may he be permitted to arrange things attractively in Heaven, as he did so often in a life that was admirable if too brief. He was unwavering in his faith and has reminded us what a Christian gentleman resembles.” I couldn’t help smiling; luckily no one could see. The idea that these people were the guardians of our morality was as hypocritical as it was ridiculous.
More holy water and then the precarious descent of the coffin into the family mausoleum.
Victorine, who was determined to be heroic to the end, broke down and sobbed now that the end had arrived. Eudes, looking dazed, tried to hold her but his wife proudly shook off this sign of comfort.
Next there were drinks and snacks in the guardsmen’s room. I absented myself a moment to change into my flats out of my heels, which had become cold and painful and covered with wet gravel. I exchanged glances with Ghislaine, who looked at me with real hate, the sort of look that said, Some day I’ll make you pay!
After I had exchanged mournful sounds with a few old ladies, I stood with Prince Eddie, who was introduced to everyone as the baron’s cousin, which awakened new frowns of condolence. He was looking very handsome in a double-breasted dark suit with padded shoulders, a dazzling white shirt, a blue tie of muted wide stripes, his chevalière (gold signet ring), and some sort of enameled black order in his lapel (I’d heard the Swedes had given him the Order of the Polar Star for skiing or something). Imagine traveling with your order just in case.
I had constant nightmares, a perpetual sentiment of guilt that sinks talons into the shoulders, a jumpiness that responds nearly hysterically to the slightest unsuspected, stealthy touch. I slept badly and dreamed frequently of Addy, who came toward me with open, imploring hands and a skull split wide open down to the white brain. I wished I could bring him back to life and restore our previous existence, even with all its anguish, as if I could rewind the film and see him borne seamlessly aloft and placed, grinning foolishly and pointing to his favorite wild olive tree, on the edge of the precipice,
before turning back to me and retracing his steps in reverse to the ruined temple. When I ate, within seconds I could feel the food rising and souring my mouth. I feared I’d vomit everything, which wouldn’t be very attractive. I heard that admonition about being attractive in Addy’s tone of voice.
I had no idea what Victorine and Eudes thought had really happened to their son (they frequently exchanged burning, meaning-laden glances), and I slid around corners trying to catch them in an anguished scene or to overhear them bad-mouthing me. Perhaps “officially” they’d decided their grandchildren could not have a murderer for a mother. Children of a homicidal mother would never be unaccompanied by gossip in society. Imagine the burden of hearing people whisper behind your back throughout your life! The Courcys had always been above reproach. Whenever I’d catch Victorine darting looks of hatred at me, she’d rush forward and smother me in embraces, murmuring, “My poor Von.”
Prince Eddie lingered on longer than he’d planned. So did Father Pierre. Because of this reluctance to move on, we were all obliged to begin and end every dinner pulling long faces, though we were merry enough during the entrée and the plat principal. I suppose we were aware of Addy’s absence to the degree that we were more relaxed and cheerful and that the children were more high-spirited. They would come thundering in, giggling and wriggling with Frau Dichter in hot pursuit; never would Addy have permitted such gaiety, but he was “away,” it seemed, on a long trip (maybe for a fitting in London).
I could see Eddie was more and more determined to court me, but though I liked the idea of being the princess de Joinville, I didn’t want to rush into another marriage with a fortune-hunting cad. One night, when we were alone in a corridor in the château, the cold coming off the rough-hewn walls, Eddie cupped my ass with his hand and said, “I’ve been longing to do that.”
I said, “Now that it’s been done, one hopes it won’t be repeated.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“A widow must be concerned with the proprieties.”