The Married Man

by Edmund White

  “I went to Calabria with Angelo and stayed on this ghastly little farm with his mother.”

  “How did you get along with her?” Julien asked.

  “She treated me exactly as one of her own children: like shit.”

  Julien laughed a long time.

  “I’m going to have Angelo’s baby,” Christine said.

  “Congratulations,” Austin and Julien chimed in almost together.

  “If it’s a girl I’ll call her Allegra.”

  “My favorite name for a girl,” Austin said truthfully, though the name had a sad association—Byron’s daughter, who’d died young.

  For a moment Austin felt old and sterile next to this ripe young woman. He wondered if she thought that, too; that this gay couple at her table were stiff and bachelorish, sapless. He wondered whether Julien was regretting losing her. Julien, however, appeared sincerely happy, but mildly so, as though he was no longer magnetized to her fate. The only question he asked was, “When is the little girl’s birth expected?”

  “The little girl! La Petite?” Christine exclaimed, delighted, scandalized. “How typically male to assume it will be a girl….” Her laugh died away and she said in her firm, emphatic way, “June. She’s due in June.” Christine spoke with all the pedantic clarity of a reformed stammerer, not just now, but all the time. Austin thought she’d make a very bad actress; she’d sound as though she was reading her lines with great deliberation, off a teleprompter.

  “Are you sure Angelo is the father?” Julien asked.

  “A hundred percent sure.”

  The walk back from the Bastille, where Christine was living, to the Île Saint-Louis was barely ten minutes long. Austin said, “When I think of all the beautiful women in Paris like Joséphine who can’t find a man, I’m stunned that Christine’s already found her Angelo.”

  “She’s always been surrounded by men, even when she’s overweight and pasty-faced and in a foul temper.”

  “What’s her secret?”

  “She’s very involving. Almost immediately she’s got you sitting front row center watching her personal drama. She knows how to make you feel everything she’s feeling. She’s never coquettish and she’s never self-pitying, the two worst female sins. And she plays her tigress sex card—she’s very passionate and leaves scratch marks on your back. It’s an absurd, corny act, and it works every time.” He said “corny” in English, a word Austin had taught him, though its meaning was as difficult for a foreigner to grasp as camp or nerd.

  Austin looked for signs that Julien wished he’d stayed with her or that he might be the future father of little Allegra, but Julien seemed entirely, almost unconsciously happy with Austin. He didn’t talk about Christine or Allegra.

  The next day Julien went alone to his farewell party at the architectural firm. He came back very late, toward three a.m., quite jovially drunk and full of tag-ends of stories. Bizarrely, Julien had never told his co-workers he was married until now, when at last he was getting divorced. He’d shown his new divorce certificate to everyone; one of the secretaries, who’d been courting him for the whole year he’d been there, became retrospectively jealous. Petulant, she left the party early. The draftsman he often worked with late, who was called Christopher McMahon after a Scottish grandfather though he couldn’t speak more than two words of English, seemed relieved to know that Julien was—or had been—a married man. At the party they kept hugging each other, and le Petit McMahon, after they’d stained their teeth with Bordeaux, even kissed Julien on the lips more than once, as though he’d just been waiting for evidence of Julien’s heterosexuality in order to make love to him. Le Petit McMahon (“Mahk-Mah-OWN” was how it came out) was married, too, of course. When Austin asked if McMahon was handsome, Julien came out with the usual consolation prize, “Not handsome, but he has a certain charm.” Austin was sure that’s what his French friends said about him.

  Clumsy with drink, Julien pulled a big flat balloon out of a paper bag. It had been his farewell gift from his office chums. It was an inflatable sex doll, a female one, of course, with red hair (perhaps, after all, he had told them Christine was a redhead or maybe he’d just said he was drawn to them). It wasn’t quite life size and it had a hole for a mouth and big startled eyes painted on (the red hair, too, was painted on). It had another hole, just one, between its legs. Julien held it up, half-inflated, and laughed his big, booming, unfunny laugh. Austin smiled weakly, but he did smile; he’d learned when he was a kid and his father had come back home from a party stumbling, laughing, then shushing himself and trying to tiptoe comically through the darkened corridors though he could scarcely walk—little Austin had learned then to come sleepily to his bedroom door with a big grin, as though joining in with Silly Daddy, though Daddy’s violent way of crashing into things and the sharp oak-cask smell rising off him had been scary. The rule down South was never to be a spoilsport.

  Julien had given notice to his firm six weeks earlier; he’d said he was off to New York to serve an apprenticeship with a major architect (he was not yet at liberty to say which one). He and Austin had in fact flown to New York for a lightning visit to see a pair of gay Hungarian architects in their forties who lived in Brooklyn Heights in austere penury and were revered by a handful of other young architects for the highly conceptual designs they’d submitted to international competitions. They were currently building a model that showed how they would turn the ugly nineteenth-century monument to Christopher Columbus in Genoa and its crowded square near the train station into a peaceful pedestrian island with great symbolic significance by installing three towers of different heights (allusions to the three masts of Columbus’s fleet).

  Over drinks Austin cut the crudest deal he’d ever concocted. He told the Hungarians, though not in so many words, that he’d write an article on their house in the Heights (virtually their only piece of “realized” work) for Elle Déco if they’d fill out a U.S. government form saying they needed to hire Julien in order to enter the big, lucrative architecture contests in Paris; no American would do, since only a French architect would be familiar with the thorny Parisian building codes and could write up the proposal in French. The exchange was as imaginary as any of their building projects, given that they hadn’t a penny to pay Julien.

  The Hungarians looked willing but frightened. They obviously needed the journalistic “exposure” in the States but as intellectuals who’d only recently left a Communist state they were wary of attracting government attention. “But you don’t understand!” Austin cooed with a giant, reassuring grin. “There’s no follow-up in America. Getting in the first time may be a slight problem, but once you’re past Immigration no one ever looks at your documents again. After all, we’re all immigrants over here.” Istvan and Laszlo (now “Steve and Larry” to their forty-something gay neighbors in the Heights) nodded warily. They looked very hungry and when they left the room for a moment Austin whispered in French to Julien not to eat their hors d’oeuvres, since the chunks of Cheddar probably also constituted their dinner.

  Julien was applying for a professional visa, a much more delicate affair than a three-month tourist visa, which Europeans could obtain on the plane over if they declared they had no intention of working in the States, had no criminal record, were not pregnant, Communists, homosexual or HIV-positive—and if they could prove they were solvent and had a return ticket. For a foreigner to obtain a professional visa, however, he had to convince a genuine American resident to sign a statement saying he or she would be hiring the foreigner—and that the job could not possibly be performed by an American. The safest career for an immigrating Frenchman was pastry chef, since everyone in official Washington circles apparently believed that no native-born American could make a convincing coffee-flavored religieuse.

  Julien and Austin had been carefully coached by Austin’s Paris lawyer, a French woman educated at Harvard who handled Americans’ tax problems and their real-estate de
als in France. Mathilde had little experience with U.S. immigration matters, however, especially those concerning a French citizen moving to the States.

  Julien even found a student, his grandmother’s lover’s great-niece, to live in his apartment for the spring semester and cover his expenses. Julien said she had a perfect upper body but an enormous butt; she wanted to be a sports instructor and to open her own gym in Nancy; and she appeared to be in love with Julien. She even said she was studying English since she was planning to travel to New York to enroll in a high-impact aerobics course and would arrange to see him there, possibly stay with him. Whereas Austin would have panicked in the same situation, Julien liked having women fall in love with him. He thought it was normal. And he was usually flirtatious in return. Apparently a real love, the unique love, the sort he’d felt for Christine and felt now for Austin, differed in quality as well as in strength from all these other flirtations.

  Austin decided to give up his Île Saint-Louis apartment. His landlady’s daughter, a dynamic, warm French businesswoman his age who lived in New York, had been begging him to move out for some time. She wanted to redo the apartment entirely in travertine and with recessed lighting so that she could rent it for five thousand dollars a month instead of eight hundred. But year after year he’d persuaded her to give him another stay of execution until he finished his furniture encyclopedia. He lived surrounded by two hundred reference works, all his books on Martin varnishes, on the bergère gondole and the fauteuil à dossier écusson, the chauffeuse and duchesse brisée (a “broken duchess” wasn’t a medieval martyr, just a sectional chaise longue). Now she was audibly relieved when he announced over the phone that he was at last moving out. The books he wasn’t shipping to Providence he gave away to friends; he even had a book party where the guests could raid his shelves. His pictures came down, leaving ghostly dust frames on the white walls. All the sheets and towels and linen were his, as well as half the furniture, including a round drop-leaf table (peasant, eighteenth century, pear wood) and a few Louis-Philippe chairs he and Little Julien had re-covered with a cheeky checked fabric they’d found in London. Austin tried to be indifferent to the loss of his little hold on Paris; such indifference, after all, was appropriate to someone facing death: good training. He called a chatty moving man who’d been recommended to him. The man spoke with a voluble American accent that Austin found ridiculous and reassuring.

  Austin had a farewell lunch with Joséphine. She complained of her dull life in which she had to work so hard just to survive that she had no time left to devote to the illustrated books for children that brought her such pleasure. On an impulse Austin invited her to come to Providence “for a year or two” and stay with Julien and him, rent free.

  She kept asking him if it was really a serious offer. When he convinced her it was, she said she couldn’t come until the following autumn—until then she was engaged to teach kindergarten (in a maternelle).

  One night after dinner in the half-denuded apartment in which the dust had been so stirred up it made them sneeze constantly, Big Julien made him sit still in one of the Louis-Philippe chairs. He handed Austin a flat, heavy box, wrapped and beribboned. Inside was a picture frame suspended from a brass bar. The frame could be flipped so that one could see the pictures on both sides. On one side was Julien’s pen-and-ink sketch of the great stone volute on the church roof across the street opposite their window; on the other was an old photograph of Julien as a seven year old with his brother, sitting in the back seat of their father’s single-engine plane. In the front passenger seat was their mother, stylishly coiffed (she looked like one of the models of the late sixties with her hair chemically straightened, wrapped around her skull and lacquered in place). Their father, the pilot, was undoubtedly taking the picture. Julien was holding their wire-haired fox terrier in his lap and laughing. He looked cute and innocent. The French had taught Austin to despise innocence as nothing but an impediment to exciting adventures (“In a French novel,” someone had said, “if the heroine is innocent she’s debauched on the second page so the reader can move on to the good part, the scenes of la volupté, whereas you Americans can write a whole book about the tragic loss of innocence: what a bore!”). Nevertheless, Austin still was attracted to Julien’s sparkling eyes, his frank, fearless merriment, the absence of all irony in his seven-year-old, plump, round-cheeked face.

  Austin was thrilled with this gift. He and Julien had lain in bed so many nights looking at the church roof. Its inward-turning spiral seemed of more mystic significance than other symbols, such as the Crucifix or the Star of David, maybe because it was their very own emblem. He knew that Julien had taken many snapshots of it and now he understood why. “I’m a lousy draftsman,” Julien said. “I’ve never been able to draw. I worked from the photos. But I did it for you, so you’d always have something—something portable—of the Île Saint-Louis.”

  “And the photo of you and your mother and brother!”

  “That’s a sacred picture to me, Petit. Do you remember that day in Nancy I left you alone for an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “I went to visit my mother’s grave. Now I wish I’d brought you along.”

  Austin didn’t ask why; he’d learned not to ask too many questions.

  Finally Julien said, “Just to introduce you to her.” He paused. “Do you believe there’s … something after all this?”

  Out of respect for Julien’s feelings for his mother, Austin said, “Perhaps. How should I know. Possibly.” But then he thought a while and decided he owed him the truth: “No. I’m sure there’s nothing after this.”

  Julien swallowed and said, “Probably just as well.”

  They went to bed.

  Austin could hear Julien breathing in the dark. He didn’t move. Well, he’d said he and his family were all atheists, hadn’t he?

  Or had that just been braggadocio?

  “I’m very moved by the drawing, Petit,” Austin whispered. Julien smiled at the ceiling but didn’t move or even open his eyes, as if he was under doctor’s orders.

  Because he had a wart on the head of his penis that wouldn’t go away, Julien went to the Hôpital Saint-Louis, which specialized, among other things, in venereal diseases. The doctor who saw him said he wouldn’t treat him unless he agreed to be tested for AIDS. He wasn’t intimating that Julien seemed likely to be positive; it was simply that no man in Paris today with a venereal wart on the head of his penis should go untested. This logic induced Julien to do, six months later, what Austin’s physician, Dr. Aristopoulos, had failed to persuade him to accept.

  The only problem was that Julien wouldn’t have the results until four weeks had gone by, and by then they’d be in America. “It’s just as well,” Austin said, “since if by some chance you should turn out to be positive it would be better if you already had your work visa and were living in Providence.”

  “But why should I be positive?”

  “God knows, I’m not saying you will be.” Austin paused. “But did you never have relationships with men?”

  Julien left the room. Later Austin heard the toilet flush. When Julien reappeared he said, “I can think of two things. When I was a child I always wanted to have a monkey. My parents said no. So I decided to head off for Africa to be a veterinary. I was just seven or eight—”

  “The age you are in the photo of the plane?”

  “Yes. And the postman found me miles from our house. He was gentle and asked me where I was going. I said I was going to catch a plane for Africa where I’d be a monkey doctor. He drove me home. Anyway, twenty years later when I finally got to Ethiopia, someone gave me a green monkey. At first I was delighted, but then it bit me—look, you can still see the marks, here, on my hand.”

  “Don’t they think green monkeys are the origin of AIDS?” Austin asked dutifully, not believing for a moment that this explanation applied to Julien.

  “The only other thing I
can think of is that once, in Ethiopia, I had an infected ear and the African doctor gave me a shot of penicillin with an old needle that he didn’t even dip in alcohol.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “It’s idiotic, but I didn’t want to be impolite.”

  “Ah, that’s your ancien régime side,” Austin said, smiling admiringly.

  They worked for three days packing up their separate apartments, paying the post office to forward their mail, giving away the electric appliances that wouldn’t work in the States without heavy, clumsy transformers, presenting the little black-and-white television to the Spanish maid, the set that Austin had bought to improve his French comprehension and which he’d ended up being addicted to, carting the remaining books to the bouquiniste on the Left Bank across from the Tour d’Argent, stuffing nine U.S. duffel bags with his scholarly books and paying one thousand dollars extra in overweight at the airport. The talkative mover came for his furniture and his trunk, which was so heavy that four men (including Austin) were needed to drag it downstairs.

  They decided to leave France in mid-January so they’d have two whole weeks to settle in before Austin had to start teaching. Julien, of course, would be going out for job interviews.

  They staggered onto their plane without having slept a full night’s sleep in a week. Following Austin’s suggestion, Julien dressed conservatively, in a dark jacket, white shirt and silver tie. “That intimidates them,” Austin said. “They feel like saluting someone who looks like a gentleman. It sets you apart from all these tourists in gym clothes. Or from the homeboys.” Austin had just read an alarming article in Newsweek about this new phenomenon, homeboys, and was ready to lecture a wide-eyed Julien: “The States is very dangerous. It’s not like Paris—”