by Howard Fast
The meat had cooled by now. Slice the mushrooms, sauté in butter, chop the mixed herbs with the parsley, add that, cool again. Now to make the puff pastry, so absolutely foolish and so absolutely complex. She had pinned up the recipe on the wall in front of her. Roll out the pastry and divide in two. Mixture of mushrooms and spices on the larger piece. Place the beef on top of it, fold pastry up and around, second piece of pastry over the top. The egg glaze. She had forgotten that entirely. Then into a hot oven for forty minutes. It left her only enough time to shower and dress. When she took the dish out of the oven, brown and beautiful, filling the house with its good smell, Marcel was at the door.
He brought a bottle of champagne and another of red wine, and under his arm was a long loaf of fresh bread. “A double celebration,” he announced, after Barbara had taken the packages and kissed him.
“Double?”
“Our anniversary and my promotion. I am no longer a contemptible critic.”
“Oh, wonderful! But you were never a contemptible critic, never a contemptible anything.”
“All critics are contemptible. Who was it, Shaw or some other very wise man, who said the critic is like the eunuch in the harem? He watches the trick turned every night, but knows he could never do it himself.”
“Yes, very clever. Now please tell me what happened,” Barbara begged him.
“Ah. So you wish to know?”
“Yes, I wish to know.”
“Very well. My estimable editor, I hear he is looking for someone on special assignment in Spain. True, we have three men there already, but this is very special. So I go to him, I plead, I threaten, I entreat, I become a veritable Cyrano of persuasion—and finally he melts, he agrees. Whereby, I am going to Spain.”
“What kind of special assignment?” Barbara asked slowly, quietly.
“Ah, come, come.” He started to kiss her again, but she pushed him away.
“What kind of special assignment?”
“What is that marvelous, enchanting smell?”
“Stop it! Don’t be cute now. I want to know what you are going to do in Spain.”
“All right. You have heard of the Fifteenth Brigade, the Internationals. It includes an American Brigade of volunteers, which they call the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. My editor wants a series of pieces on them. They are very brave, very gallant, and we have printed very little about them. You see, I speak English, thanks to you.”
“You told him you speak English?” she asked coldly.
“But I do, Barbara.”
“I suppose you do, in a manner of speaking, if you call it English. I think the whole thing stinks.”
“Just like that?”
“How else? Shall I tie it up in a rose-colored ribbon? You know how I feel about war, about this insanity of men killing each other for their filthy causes, for their noble aims.”
“We never talked about it.”
“You’ve been living with me and sleeping with me for almost a year. You don’t know me? Must I spell everything out—this is how Barbara feels about this, and this is how Barbara feels about that?”
“You’re right. There’s a lot I don’t know about you. I’ve never seen you in such a royal rage before.”
“Then it’s time.”
“Baby, baby,” he said, “we can’t have a fight. We never had a fight. Please, please try to understand what this means to me, a by-line assignment as a special foreign correspondent. I don’t have to argue the cause of the Spanish Republic. You know it as well as I do, and you know what that butcher Franco has done. I’m not enlisting. I’m not a volunteer. I am simply going as a writer, as a journalist, to put down what I see and hear.”
“So you can say, thank God for a war.”
“No, that’s not fair.”
“What is fair? For me to fall in love with a man who goes off to get shot at in this stupid game? I told you about the kid in San Francisco, his poor wasted life. He was in love with me. I was selfishly spared, because there was no way I could love him. But I do love you, and I will not have this happen to me again. I will not. I know I live in a world of maniacs, but I thought that you and I—”
“Would be spared?” he asked gently. “No one is spared, Barbara, dear love, no one. And this is something I have to do, believe me. It’s not forever. Only six weeks, and then I’ll be back, whole and safe and sound, I promise you.”
She dropped into a chair and began to weep.
“No, no tears, please.” He knelt beside her, kissing her hand, first on the back and then on the palm, a gesture so French, so unexpected, that she began to giggle through her tears.
“May I open the champagne?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“And will you tell me what the marvelous smell is?”
“Boeuf en croûte.”
“Am I not the most fortunate of all men? Am I not?”
Later that evening, her emotions under control, Barbara tried to be both practical and helpful. “Remember,” she said to Marcel, “you are an observer. You have no obligation to put yourself in a dangerous situation. That would be stupid and wasteful. Your job is to see things and write about them.”
“Yes, my dear,” he agreed.
“You’re not listening.”
“But I am. Every word.”
“By the way, I do know someone in that unit. Well, no. I don’t really know him, but the Levys do. You remember? I told you about them.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“It seems that this boy worked for them at the winery. His name is Bernie Cohen. Can you remember that?”
“I will try. What is he doing in Spain?”
“Well, he’s Jewish and he’s a Zionist or something of that sort, and he intends to go to Palestine. From what my brother wrote to me, he enlisted in the Lincoln Brigade to get experience in fighting—which is perfectly insane, but I don’t know what part of this is not insane. But Joe met him at Higate, and he says he is competent and reliable, so at least that would be one person you would know.”
“Barbara, I don’t really have to know anyone. I’ll be with the press. You simply must not worry about me. I’ll be all right.”
“You don’t have to go. You can still tell them that you don’t want this wretched assignment.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
“All right. I won’t speak of it again. You know how I feel. Just think about it.”
“Not only that, but I’ll do the dishes.”
“To hell with the dishes. Take me to bed, and we’ll pretend there are only two of us in a very beautiful, uncomplicated world.”
***
Marcel left for Spain the day before the Levys arrived in Paris, and the evening of the day they arrived, they telephoned Barbara and asked her to dine with them the following day. On her father’s side, Barbara had no blood relations. Daniel Lavette, the child of two immigrant parents, had been left an orphan at the age of seventeen. Since she was a child, Barbara had known of his close attachment to the Cassala family in San Mateo and the Levy family in Sausalito, and she had also known of her mother’s distaste for both families. They were a part of her father’s life. She had never met any of them, but through the years she had heard a great deal about them. For most Californians, the wine business wears a halo of romance, and Barbara was intrigued with the notion of two young people buying an abandoned winery during Prohibition and turning it into a prosperous enterprise—and now the thought of selling California wine in France delighted her. In any case, they would fill some of the empty hours that faced her during Marcel’s absence. Until he left, she had not realized how totally she had come to depend on him, and when she looked back now at her years in Paris before she had met him, they appeared to be lonely and barren beyond belief.
There were no tears after her initial outburst. She had gon
e with Marcel to the Gare de Lyon, and while waiting for his train, they lunched at one of the stands in the station, agreeing that the ham, sandwiched in small loaves of fresh bread, and the mugs of cold beer were as good as anything they had ever tasted. They laughed a good deal, and she expunged the scene that had taken place in her apartment by assuring him that she would steal from his pieces in Le Monde without conscience, incorporating what she stole into her own “Letter from Paris.” They were self-consciously gay and young and delighted with themselves until it was train time, and then she clung to him, whispering, “You bastard, I’ll never forgive you for going away.’’ But then, when the train began to move and he had poked his head out of his compartment, she ran alongside and shouted, “I’ve forgiven you, but only for six weeks. One day more and I’ll cut your heart out.”
Two days later, getting out of a cab at the Hotel de la Trémoille, where the Levys were staying, she felt that she had worked out her period of being alone and that six weeks was by no means the eternity she had imagined. Jake and Clair Levy were waiting for her in the lobby. Barbara recognized them; she knew that Clair Levy was a redhead, but she was unprepared for the striking, unusual look of the woman, almost as tall as her husband, who was well over six feet, long-limbed, almost raw-boned, a high, full bust, and a strong-featured freckled face under a mop of flaming red hair. She was quite beautiful, yet Barbara felt that to think of her simply as a beautiful woman diminished her. Jake Levy was a burly heavyset man, with dark hair turning gray, a prominent nose, pale blue eyes, his heavy shoulders tight in his clothes, like a farmer in city dress.
Barbara walked over to them and said, “I know you because Daddy told me so much. I’m Barbara Lavette.”
Their greeting waited on a moment of amazement and delight; then Clair Levy folded Barbara in her arms, kissed her, and then stepped back to look at her. “Oh, great! You’re just what you should be!”
Barbara kissed Jake. He stood there grinning at her. “We’re such old friends,” Barbara said. “We mustn’t pretend that we’ve just met. I knew you both the moment I came into the hotel. Daddy always spoke of the green eyes and the red hair.”
“You see,” Clair told her husband, “being a bit freakish has its advantages.”
“Oh, no!” Barbara cried. “I think you’re the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen.”
“So do I,” Jake said comfortably. “We’re so glad to finally meet you, Barbara. I saw you once, when you were two or three years old. Danny sneaked you out to Sausalito. You remember, Clair?”
“I certainly do. You’ve changed, darling.”
“I’m sure I have.”
“We didn’t make any dinner arrangements,” Jake explained. “This is my first time back since the war, and the first for Clair, and I’ve forgotten what little French I picked up then. I thought you’d know where the food is good, since you’re practically a native.”
“One of the delicious things about Paris is that the food is good practically everywhere. There’s a little restaurant on the Left Bank called Lapérouse where I know the proprietor. We’re sure to get a table, and the food is good. We can take a cab.”
They listened with the awe that Americans hold toward anyone fluent in a foreign language as she gave directions to the cab driver and then to her conversation with the owner of the restaurant, to whom she introduced them as members of her family.
“Your French is amazing,” Jake said as they were seated.
“It should be. My goodness, I had four years of it in private school and then two more years at college, and I’ve been living here almost four years. I even think in French now, and do you know, I dream in French.”
“Don’t go on.” Clair sighed. “I don’t have two words.”
“She speaks Spanish like a native,” Jake said.
“Oh, come on, Jake. Don’t be defensive. We have Chicanos working at the winery, and I can tell them what to do. That’s about it.”
At Jake’s urging, Barbara ordered dinner while he pored over the wine list. He selected three Chateau Burgundies, each a different label and a different year.
“Are you sure?” Barbara asked him. “We’ll never finish three bottles.”
“We don’t have to. We’ve been tasting Burgundies at every meal on the ship coming over.”
“It’s a practically demonic compulsion with Jake,” Clair explained. “They talk of carrying coals to Newcastle. We come carrying wine to France. Every grower we know says we are totally out of our minds—even for dreaming that America could sell wine to France. But I guess Jake and I have been out of our minds ever since we got into wine, and do you know, Barbara, I do think that all wine makers are a little crazy. It comes from breathing the fumes day and night.”
“That’s nonsense,” Jake said. “If we’re crazy, we’re crazy like foxes. I’m the kind of jingoistic American who thinks we can do anything better than anyone else, and that includes wine. Are we boring you with all this talk of wine?”
“No, no, please. I’m fascinated,” Barbara assured him.
“All right. I’ll try to explain. Up in the Napa Valley and the Sonoma Valley, where wine is like a religion, the growers with very few exceptions have decided that our Cabernet Sauvignon is the great red wine of California and thereby of America. Oh, it’s good all right, and when it’s well made, really well made, it can compare with some of the fine French Médocs. Essentially, it’s a claret. Also, it’s a wine that can stand aging, and if you can afford to lay it away and let it sit for ten years, you have a wine as good as anything in the world. But we can’t put away our wine for ten years; we just don’t have the money or the reserves, and as for a young Cabernet—well, it has a little too much tannin for my taste.”
“That’s the stuff in wine that makes the cheeks pucker,” Clair said. “It’s also rather sharp.”
“So we broke with the crowd,” Jake said, “and decided to experiment with Pinot Noir. That’s a Burgundy. The first of our vines came from France, but California soil and California sunshine change it—improve the grape to my taste. Pinot Noir is a beautiful wine, soft and smooth as velvet when it’s well made, and with much less of the tannic taste. But the decisive fact is that while it is also a red that needs aging, two years of laying it away will produce as fine an aged wine as eight or ten years with the claret. Now ours is a varietal, which means wine made out of a single type of grape. The French tend to blend their Burgundies. By now, Clair and I have tasted at least forty Pinots and Burgundies, and we still think we’re sitting on top of the lot.”
“That’s to our taste,” Clair said. “We’re by no means great wine tasters. We know a little, much less than Jake likes to think we know, and the wine is as much an excuse for this trip as a business venture. We shipped ten cases over here, not so much for France as for Holland and Denmark, where we think there might be a market. Just for tasting. Not for selling. Germany would be ideal, but we wouldn’t set foot in that hateful place. Anyway, American wine might just be a novelty. What do you think of the notion?”
“I think it’s great,” Barbara said. “Just great. And I think I could be of some help. I know people on Le Monde, which is one of the most prestigious papers in Paris, and I think I could arrange for an interview. They’re Marcel’s dear friends, and I do think it’s newsworthy. I’ll write about your visit myself, but I’m afraid publicity in New York won’t help you much.”
“Marcel?” Clair asked.
Barbara smiled. “There goes the cat out of the bag. You’re the first to know. I haven’t told Mother or Daddy, but I simply must tell someone. Marcel Duboise is a French journalist whom I love very much. Someday, I suppose, we’ll be married. He’s thirty years old, dark, skinny, kind of funny-looking, and very kind and very smart.”
“I’m so glad. He sounds wonderful,” Clair said. “Will we meet him?”
“Only if you can stay six weeks.
He left two days ago for Spain.” Then she went on to tell them about Marcel—who he was, what he did, and how they had met. She found herself talking to Jake and Clair as if she had known them all her life, in part because she was so hungry for some part of home, of California, and in part because they were warm and open and easy to talk to.
The food came and the wine came. The wine was tasted, judged, discussed. Barbara knew very little about wine. She and Marcel were quite content with vin ordinaire, a liter of which could be bought for a franc, and she was quite in awe of the manner in which Clair and Jake discussed the virtues of the three Burgundies. Then they told her how they had gotten into making wine, with old Rabbi Blum coming to them with the proposal that they make the sacramental wine for the Orthodox synagogues of San Francisco. “He’s been dead these past five years, rest his soul,” Clair said. “But would you believe it, we just about built Higate on sacramental wine. We sold to the Jews, the Catholics, the Episcopalians—sweet, horrible stuff. Yes, we still make a good deal of it.”
A whole past came alive for Barbara that evening. They told her the story of how Dan Lavette and Mark Levy bought their first iron ship, the Oregon Queen, from an old Swede called Swenson. Clair’s father, Jack Harvey, was the captain of the Oregon Queen, and Clair, then ten years old, had her first mad crush on Dan.
“He was always my hero,” Clair said. “That never changed. Martha—poor child, she’s dead. She was Jake’s sister—Martha and I both worshipped the ground Dan walked on—”
Jake, uncomfortable, changed the subject. They had scheduled ten days in Paris and then would be off to Amsterdam. Would it be possible for Barbara to spend some time with them, perhaps show them some of the sights? She said she would love it, and with Marcel away, it was the best thing that could have happened to her. They talked on and on, and suddenly they discovered that it was midnight, and that they were the last ones in the restaurant.