A good word, said Elinor. The right one.
In the end no curtains are washed, no grass scythed, no jam thrown out. Marie-Claude’s energy seems to have drained away. She does not buzz round in her usual fashion, putting things to rights. She sits in the window and gazes across the valley, in between reading but not so severely as usual the pile of medical journals she has brought with her. She walks. She drives them down to Séverac Gare and they buy good things to eat from the butcher who makes them, foie gras, brandade, aligot, and the coarse meaty specialities of the region. And afterwards they sit under the bosomy plane trees in the cafe opposite the railway station (whose nineteenth century architecture recalls the handsome buildings of the sewer farm, several valleys down the coast from Elinor’s childhood home, where her family used to go blackberrying when she was small) and drink kir, white wine with blackcurrant liqueur, with the local shopkeepers and farmers perhaps and a few tourists, and on Thursday the market people. They wash their dishes, sweep the floor, take drives in the late afternoon to look at dolmen. Elinor gluts herself on detective stories – old-fashioned ones, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, someone called Cyril Hare she’s never heard of, a pseudonym for somebody else she doesn’t know either – and ready to be serious starts on La Nausée which she’s never read, even in English. She walks too, up to the castle, but now you have to pay to get in, because of the restoration work, and it has lost its old melancholy power, when the Renaissance wall trembled and you thought of mutability and squinted the mind’s eye to catch a glimpse of its ancient splendour. The rubble of the great double horseshoe staircase, with its ramps for driving a horse and carriage up to the first floor, has been cemented into place, but the staircase is no more perceivable. Now the castle is all fixed up it could be a new ruin, built yesterday. The stone is remortared and rooms have been reconstructed with doors that lock. Cheerful tubs of flowers stand about.
She told Flora that she’d do some thinking about their book while she was here but it doesn’t work. The castle with its heavy weight of grim old stories is become a historical exhibit, safe, tidy, under control. You can no longer fall in the well or off the wall-less towers and down the cliff. In one of the empty shops of the old town is a display of pictures, illustrations for a comic strip of Gloriande’s adventures. It looks like a vampire comic, heavily black and white with lots of red gashes in clothes and cloaks and wounds, and evil men with fangy teeth in a Transylvanian decor of coffins and castles. Gloriande has become a hectic gypsy, with wild black hair and mouth in a permanent soundlessly screaming 0.
She reads in La Nausée: The past does not exist. Not at all. Neither in things nor in my thought. The Gloriande comic seems evidence of that. She remembers her argument with Christophe, when he said that if the castle was useful for people to pave their pigsties or burn in their fireplaces that was a good thing, and she’d insisted that preserving it as a piece of history was more important than people’s convenience. Neither of them entirely agreeing with their own argument, but being passionate about it. You were right, Christophe, she says to him, better to moulder away than this theme-park immortality.
She wonders about the past’s not existing; it seems an easy idea to refute. The house, it exists, clearly. But if its stories are forgotten then perhaps it is only a present existence. Maybe that is all there should be. A place to live in now, and who cares what temporary lives overlaid it in the past. She knows she doesn’t believe this.
In the evenings Marie-Claude plays Christophe’s old opera records. I do not normally care for opera, she says, but here …
It is love and death, says Elinor, and Marie-Claude’s mouth pleats, her eyes grow huge with tears. Yes, she says, in a voice that quavers. Love and death. And sits and listens. So much pleasure in love and death, she says. I wouldn’t have imagined it.
Elinor thinks: the house has won. Séverac has triumphed. But whether it has won by defeating Marie-Claude or converting her she does not know. And anyway, the verbs are not right. Won, triumphed; maybe prevailed is better, suggesting less action than being. The house’s patient, centuries-long stillness, its mute voice of endurance, its slow dwelling in time … Marie-Claude is understanding them, as Christophe did, and Elinor learned to. Whether it will make any difference is another matter.
23
On warm winter days the sun shines very bright and clear from a sky the intense summer blue of forget-me-nots run wild in a garden. The air is cold, sharp as a blade that nicks the skin and threatens to slice through the flesh, but this benign sunlight shines on you and warms you, and is a blessing as it is not in summer, when you avoid it.
So, this winter Saturday afternoon Clovis is sitting on his ferry wharf with his head tipped back to the sun and thinking about the red velvety colour of the lining of his eyelids when he hears people approaching. He straightens up, opens his eyes. It is two women. Good afternoon, he says, bold since his encounter with the willow sculptors, and they reply, Good afternoon. They walk a little past him and lean on the rail.
It is Elinor and Marie-Claude, who have been lunching at The Point, with Ivan who’s now in the library. Marie-Claude has never been to Canberra before; Elinor is always inviting her and suddenly she said yes. Clovis sees the women as neat figures in dark overcoats with coloured scarves at the neck and thin legs underneath, pointed anklebones he can decipher, and one has a fair amount of brown curly hair and one skimpier blonde. Their fine black-gloved hands they keep in their pockets, occasionally taking them out and pointing. The air is so very still and clear, in this sun-dried high country afternoon, without mists or vapours, that Clovis can hear quite clearly what they are saying. He decides that one of the women is French, he recognises her accent, and possibly, maybe, but it doesn’t seem likely, her voice. He squints at them, trying to see them clearly. It is only when he wants to look at people that he misses his spectacles, and that is not very often. He was good at faces, when he could see them, a handy thing in business, remembering faces and the names to go with them.
We should take a ferry, says the French voice. I like to travel by water.
You’d wait a long time, I’m afraid.
Isn’t there a ferry service, to and fro across the lake?
Elinor shakes her head.
But in Sydney, ferries all over the harbour. Why not here?
There’s somehow nowhere to go. I think you might be able to go to the museum by ferry, when it opens, but that’s because the parking’s expected to be so dreadful, they won’t want people to come by car.
Ah, yes, cars; Canberra the city of cars.
You’re remembering Christophe, when he was here, saying Canberra was all very nice, but what a horror for pedestrians.
Oh yes!
Clovis sitting idly listening to these women idly chatting and thinking how their voices have a particular modulation that enables them to speak quite softly and yet their words carry and can be easily understood at a distance, Clovis thinking that this is class, and confidence, prosperity, certainty, you speak and your words matter, Clovis is caught by the name Christophe. He squints anew at Marie-Claude, whose face is turned to Elinor as they lean on the rail and look out over the water. Christophe. He knows now who she is. The dinner in Sydney, years back. Meals in restaurants in Paris. Christophe. The OECD. Important negotiations. Oh yes they were, he thought so then. Christophe was how he found out about Laguiole knives. The useful peasant knives of the country he came from, as Parisians do, coming from Paris but always somewhere else as well. Pulling it out of his waistcoat pocket, running his fingers along the polished horn of the handle, showing them the brass bee at its junction with the blade, which is the mark of the real thing, and Clovis thinking that he wanted one for himself. His wife saying afterwards, in the hotel room, in her discontented voice: French women are always so elegant, and yet look at them, look at that Marie-Claude, what is there in it? How do they do it? So smart, and yet what can you put your finger on?
You look very sm
art, he said.
Not like her.
What if he were to stand up, bow lightly, and make himself known to madame. It’s a pleasant little frisson of a thought, but his body stays still, it knows he won’t do it. Important negotiations. He tips his head back to the sun.
Marie-Claude says: Do you think he sees us? Christophe? In some way sees, knows, is aware of us?
I’d like to think so, says Elinor. I want to think that people we love who’ve died still know us.
Clovis’s attention is pierced by that. He listens harder.
I find it difficult to imagine heaven, says Marie-Claude, how it could not be so so dull. Eternity and praising God without end. But some consciousness, I believe in that. I want to think Christophe sees us here, and likes to be with us.
In the Antipodes, with too many cars.
Not too many, just too many where the people should be.
So, thinks Clovis. Christophe dead. The small figure, so neat, so charming, so suavely full of life. Christophe dead, and me … dead to the world. And he smiles, a secret melancholy quite joyful smile, lying back in the red velvet space under his eyelids.
Elinor is saying, Ivan did say forty-five minutes, he probably meant it. We should wander up to the library.
But how can he get a book and read it in forty-five minutes? It’s not possible.
He called it up yesterday, but couldn’t wait for it then. It’ll be there, he’ll rush in, check what he wants – it’ll make him very happy. He’ll tell us all about it.
This is the scholarly life, says Marie-Claude.
And if he doesn’t come we can look at the stained-glass windows, says Elinor. It’s getting too cold here, now.
Clovis turns around to watch them walk up the slope, their feet pecking neatly at the grass. Good wives, he thinks. Women of virtue, which is a calm and certain thing. What is a good wife? Is it different from a good woman? Thinks of his own wife, whom he must have loved. Didn’t he? When she was slim and blonde and pretty and laughed, no no, that’s a cliché of a wife, Lindi was always a bit angular, and blonde indeed but shortly after they were married he looked at her shouting face and it wasn’t the sweet fair face in his mind but a darker face, disguise undone, when it frowned and shouted at him, and he saw the line of unblonde roots like an antihalo round her head and how drab this real thing was, not dark, not tough brunette turned fake blonde but simply dull, and felt great pangs of deception, not fair of him at all to mind so much because he had always known hair so blonde as hers wasn’t natural but somehow he’d expected the pretty blonde face to be real, but it wasn’t either, there was an angrier harder face that belonged to the drab hair, with a long nose a bit crooked and dark eyebrows too close together. And her laughter a form of malice. But wasn’t the problem not Lindi so much as the eyes of love? He stopped seeing her with the eyes of love and that was when the drabness took over. If he could have not lost that gaze, maybe she would always have been as blonde and charming as he’d believed at the beginning. But then, why had he stopped seeing with the eyes of love?
A good wife … what about a good husband? He’d tried to be that, as defined by her, but was hers a good definition? Maybe he should have tried being a good man. And now he thinks of Lindi with compassion. Remote, but compassion. His mind owes some of its present furnishing to Lindi. She believed in Art, in their duty to it. First nights. New books. The great European galleries. Lear and his poor fool hanged. You can’t even wonder about the reasons being wrong, he would be arrogant to do that. He now is testament to there being no wrong reasons for paying attention to works of art.
He stands up and goes and leans on the rail where the women stood, sees the vast indifferent blue sky, thinks, but why should it not be indifferent, would I want it to be paying attention to me? I want it to be itself and thoroughly so, as it is. Vast and blue and beautiful. Between it and the cold lake, the fringes of habitation and vegetation. Relate to those he could if he chose but he does not. No swans today, though the day is fair. Maybe the black swans like darker days.
Clovis turns his head and there is a bride and her badly done by bridesmaids, their fat and ugly dresses making the bride more beautiful but not more generous, the wedding party standing at the edge of the water being photographed against the bright blue day across the lake. Sweet day, so calm, so fair, so bright … he still hasn’t looked up the rest of it. Not one of Lindi’s, that isn’t, long before Lindi. The two black-coated wives have disappeared into the library. One wife, one widow … and thou must die. Where does that line come from? Out of the blue, adding itself, not following straight on, something missing, but he knows it belongs.
Gwyneth is suddenly beside him, she has the gift of quiet moving, this girl. He hasn’t seen her for a while. The grey cardigan is looking rather matted. The brassy yellow tideline of her hair is lower. She’s biting her fingernails, her hands are blue and grubby, picked red at the quick. Around the urgent biting of her little finger she gives him a faint smile. He wants to hold her hands, tight and kind, stop her biting them, calm the anxious nerves, but he has not the habit of touching her, nor does she invite it. Hi, he says. The police launch speeds past, up the lake towards the river end, the pontoon of the ferry wharf dips and plashes when the wake reaches them. Clovis squints at the wedding party, and says:
Sweet day, so calm, so fair so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky
He hums the rhythm of the next line:
And thou must die.
Gwyneth winces as her teeth rip the quick of her fingernail. What’s that? What’s this must die? Freaky. Bloody freaky.
I thought it was a poem for a marriage. But I’m not so sure.
Tell you what, when I get married, I won’t have dogs like that for bridesmaids. My wedding will be beautiful all the way through. Pale grey I think I’ll have them in, that stiff silky stuff that goes into shiny crumples, with little straps, they won’t be fat, they’ll look terrific, and I’ll be wearing silvery white with a great big skirt. And a really tight bodice, with pearls in patterns sewn on. Not too low, I think low dresses on brides look common. All your boobs hanging out. And a long long train with people to hold it. And you can be the father of the bride, Clovis, and give me away.
I shall be honoured, says Clovis, bowing, hiding the sudden damp in his eyes. Do you have the lucky man in mind?
Not Saul, for sure. But little Braddy can be the pageboy, and hold the white satin cushion with the rings on it. My ring will be all diamonds, but the man’s will just be gold, diamonds aren’t the thing for a man. She holds out her hand, fingers spread in a starfish, and looking at it smiles so secretly that Clovis looks away.
24
Jerome
Elinor had been telling me about reading La Nausée. Clearly it puzzled her a little, at the same time as it fascinated her. The hero decides he has had no adventures. Things – what he calls histoires, apparently – have happened to him, events, incidents. But not adventures.
She lent me the book, she bought it, in English, after reading it in French when she was in Séverac. In that happy winter of grim events. Oh yes, they were grim, but I was happy. I’ve been thinking about this notion of no adventures. What Sartre – or his character – is actually saying is that for the most banal event to become an adventure it must be recounted – recount, you see, to tell again, to ascertain the value a second time. To give currency once more. We live surrounded by stories. This man in La Nausée says he wants to live his life as if he were relating it, but that you have to choose: to live, or to recount.
It’s to do with time, with somehow catching it. I have to think, as I relate my adventures, for adventures they were and I do not believe that is in my reshaping of them, for I want my narrative to be transparent, to note down events as they were, and I have to think myself back in that time, and sometimes it is an effort of the imagination that comes near to eluding me, for this person who sits in this room with its occasional bars of dusty sunlight, his
cat perching on the paper batting the pen, this person is no longer the Jerome of the adventures of that winter, so perhaps it is right, the choice is made: he lived, I narrate. I sit in my study which is the only room I have with its view of the bare bagged wall and recount, relate, recall. Again, again, again.
It’s hot, hot. Our days are dogged by the dog star. Not human weather. Dog days. At night, says the weather report, the temperature drops to 17°. Possibly, but for what tiny moment? Between 5.18 and 5.19, perhaps, in the bleak white insomniac hours of the morning, the dying time, when our hold on life is at its slightest, and then after that second’s brief low the temperature begins its climb. Even early in the morning there is a slit of bushfire sun shining through the bent slat of the window blind; go into the room suddenly and its smouldering orange will make you think your house is burning. It’s apocalyptic.
No? Days of heat enervate, make you fanciful and gloomy. Make words like apocalyptic seem normal. Make that time of cold I am writing about seem like another place, another time, another life, that makes no sense in this one.
I have noticed that people who write about the past put in a lot of weather. Is it to try to set you back in that time, so you will have a sense of how it truly was, the blue frost on the grass, the indigo sky, the lake the colour of lead, the metallic heaviness of a cold and sunless winter? Though in truth the sun did shine quite often, and the sky would blaze bright blue, though the lake was at best pewter and not given to sparkling, only sometimes the grey water formed glittering sharp peaks under the baffling wind.
Or is this weather writing a postponement, a distraction of temperatures and elements, from the real business of the stories they find it so hard to tell?
Okay. Okay. Here it is. That night was cold – not decoration this, essential to the narrative – freezing cold, clear and frosty, exciting weather, inspiriting, still of course the winter, amazing how much can happen in a winter. I had dined at the restaurant but left, not too late. Flora was staying on, and would come to my house later. I wanted to do some work. Flora was so very clear about what she was doing, whereas for me it was grand and nebulous – hazy, as a cloud of stars is hazy. I had been thinking this out over my dinner, not bothering to hear the conversations in my whispering gallery. I had formulated the thought that Flora’s work is about doing, she wishes to achieve a perfect thing. She quoted somebody to me once, to the effect that even in what it offers best, nature gives nothing absolute, and she told me that what she was about was the search for that absolute. That nature cannot manage. That’s where her culinary art, her endeavour, took her. It’s a matter of simplifying to the point of perfection. And simplifying by doing, over and over again, until that point is reached.
The Point Page 17